Book 



C OF/RIGHT DEPOSIT. 



PHASES OF THE 
SACRED PASSION 



A Lenten Course 

By REV. WILLIAM GRAHAM 




New York: 
Joseph F. Wagner 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 
Two Copies Received 



MAR 1 W9 



•Gel 




J2ttnl <&bmt 

REMIGIUS LAFORT, S.T.L. 

Censor 

Smprimatur 

*JOHN M. FARLEY, D. D. 

Archbishop of Neiv York 

New York, January 18, 1909 



Copyright, 1909, by JOSEPH F. WAGNER, New York 



CONTENTS 

Page 



I The Shadow of the Cross 5 

II The Betrayal of Judas ...... 14 

III The Denial of Peter ...... 23 

IV Christ Before Herod 32 

V Christ Before Pilate 41 

VI The Cross Bearing 51 



Phases of the Sacred Passion 

A LENTEN COURSE IN SIX SERMONS 



I. THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS 

"And as he spoke these things, there came a cloud and overshadowed 
them." — Luke ix, 34. 

SYNOPSIS. — Introduction. — The Cross both a power and a spell. No 
wonder, for it sums up the life, teaching and ideals of Christ, "Son of 
the living God," though often directly opposed to pleasure, wealth and 
culture, the gods of the world; yet its attractive force irresistible. Once 
a badge of infamy, the Cross is now the symbol, the Hag, the banner, of 
the conquering Christ, and His advancing kingdom. In this uplifting and 
glorification of the symbol, lurks the danger of our forgetting what the 
Cross really meant to Christ in life; and what it ought to mean in ours. 
Hence, the need of dwelling on the sacred Passion of Our Lord, of 
which the Cross is the synonym. 

I. The Cross in shadow ever lay over the world; for it implies 
sacrifice, the need and accompaniment of sin. Rested personally on Our 
Lord all through His human life.^ His consciousness of the future. Horror 
of impending and anticipated evils. The types and prophesies of the Old 
Testament were to Him shadows of the Cross. The tree of life, the mur- 
der of Abel, Noah carrying wood to build the ark, Isaac bearing the wood 
on which he should be offered in sacrifice by his own father, the wonder- 
working rod of Moses, the life of David, all traced out in His mind the 
image of the Cross on which He should redeem the world. 

II. As He advances in life, the shadows deepen. They outline the 
Cross in all its terrible features. Finally, they culminate as threatening 
clouds massing in the sky; and the storm they presage, breaks in full 
fury on Him, in the dread hour of the agony in the garden. The Passion 
these shadows outlined now begins. 

Lessons. — Lives of most of us lie in shadow. Deep shade or thick 
darkness tinge, if they do not envelope, what are deemed the sunniest 
and merriest lives. Death, and sin, and uncertainty of the future, are 
enough to darken all lives. Whence came light, peace, hope and rest? 
From that very Cross, the shadows of which darkened the life of Christ. 
Under its shadow will the soul find forgiveness and peace and eternal 
rest. 

Introduction. — A spell clings to the Cross of Christ. Since its 
shadow fell alike on friend and foe at Calvary, the eyes of the 
world have been riveted on it, either in love or hatred, in reverence 
or contempt. And no wonder, for the ideals of Christ are embodied 
in it. It is the Gospel in a single word. It stands for His life, suf- 
ferings and death; and shadows forth, too, the provision He made 



6 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



for the redemption, sanctification and salvation of men. As an his- 
torical event the Passion is past, but it ever lives in a visible and 
tangible form in the Cross, which, like the flag of a great world 
power, meets us everywhere. The attractive force of the Cross, in 
a world where pleasure reigns supreme, is an enigma were it not 
that Christ has said, "If I be lifted up from the earth, I shall draw 
all things to myself." 

That what was once an emblem of crime, shame and degrading 
torture should become the ensign of the "King of Glory," fhe 
banner and flag of the conquering Christ and His every-spreading 
kingdom, is in itself no small wonder. And yet in this very triumph 
of the symbol there lurks the danger of our forgetting what its 
reality meant to Him when he bore it to Calvary, and for three 
long hours hung on it in agony. We now see the Cross, deckea 
with roses, carved in gold, silver and ivory, glittering in the dia- 
dems of kings, and so overlook what it should mean and stand for 
in our lives. 

Lest, then, we forget the lessons it is meant to convey, it is weii 
for us, during this holy season of Lent, to follow Our Lord in some 
phases of His Passion. The Cross, like Him who died on it, is 
"set for the fall and resurrection of many." It will either raise us 
aloft, and be a ladder to heaven, or fall upon us, and crush us by 
its weight. Its shadow is upon us all, for weal or woe. Like the 
pillar of the cloud in the passage of the Red Sea, "it gives light by 
night" to the children of God; but is "cloud and darkness to their 
enemies." Among the actors in the tragedy of the Cross some 
repented, believed, and were saved: others hardened their hearts, 
mocked, and were lost. So to-day the Cross is either supreme folly 
or supreme wisdom. Its shadow chills or refreshes, brings spiritual 
life or spiritual death. The Cross was never absent from Our Lord's 
life; and in and through it we must be fashioned into His image. 
Its shadow must ever cover us. 

I. The Cross did not appear to Him for the first time when He 
quitted the judgment hall of Pilate to bear it upon His shoulders. It 
haunted Him through life. Its shadow fell upon His manger-cradle 
at Bethlehem. He grew up under it. A beautiful modern painting 
represents Our Lord as a boy in the act of stretching His arms 
after the work of the day at the door of His humble home in Naza- 
reth. The rays of the setting sun behind Him cast the shadow of 
a clearly marked cross that startles His mother and carries grief 



THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS 



7 



and agony into her heart. Where there is self-sacrifice, there truly 
is the shadow of the Cross. This sacrifice, this Cross, is the antidote 
of sin. Its shadow in a manner reached heaven; for, in the great 
act of self-annihilation, that induced God to become man, and 
suffer in His human nature for sin, the Cross cast its shadow. 
Calvary was the culmination of the cycle of sin, and of sacrifice 
for sin, the falling away of the mists and shadows that lay between 
God and man. But there is nothing in shadow to the eye of God. 
All stands out in brightest light. There is no future, there is noth- 
ing prophetic, or uncertain, to Him. To Our Lord as God the Cross 
in anticipation, the Passion in prophecy, stood out before Him in 
grim reality. The hot glare of its cruel pangs ever fell upon His 
soul and made Him indeed "the man of sorrows." Clearness of 
vision, begetting a sure anticipation, intensifies coming evils. There 
is a sense in which shadows and presentiments are as bad, if not 
worse, than the reality. The shadow of the descending sword is as 
terrible to the victim as the object that casts it. 

How far did Our Lord as man realize in anticipation the terrible 
sufferings of His sacred Passion? To what extent was He con- 
scious of the doom that awaited Him? How far did the human 
element in consciousness blend with the divine ? These are perhaps 
questions that will never be answered. The lamb springs into the 
butcher's arms, but the criminal recoils in horror at the mere threat 
of even a justly deserved death. In the case of the innocent "Lamb 
of God that taketh away the sins of the world," the shadow of the 
coming Cross revealed itself to Him in all its dread reality. What 
is night to us was to Him as "light of day." The Old Testament 
types, figures, and prophecies, dim to us, even in the light of their 
fulfilment, revealed themselves to Him in all their dread yet luminous 
significance. 

The tree of life, that rose in stately splendor in Eden, promise of 
perpetual youth and vigor, symbolized to Him the dread tree of 
shame, on which in untold agony He should yield up His life to 
save us from eternal death and win for us life everlasting. 

The cry of Abel, slain by a cruel brother, and this first just man's 
blood, calling to heaven for vengeance, foreshadowed His own 
brutal murder by the wicked brethren He loved and prayed for, and 
their mad cry to heaven, "His blood be upon us and upon our chil- 
dren." History has stored up for our warning what that cruel 
prayer meant to Him and to them. 



8 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



Past events cast their shadows into the future. The story of the 
flood to the ordinary Jew was but the record of a visitation of 
divine wrath, which the rainbow in the sky told them could never 
be repeated ; but to the vision of Christ it was a shadow of Calvary. 
He beheld the one just man of the day amid the scoffs and jeers of 
his brethren painfully struggling under the wood that was to build 
the ark wherein clean and unclean alike could find salvation; and 
in that just man's shadow He saw Himself amidst the jeers and im- 
precations of a wicked crowd wounded, weary and "bruised for our 
sins," bending under the beam of shame on His way to Golgotha. 

It was the cruel Cross again that cast its lurid shadow on His 
soul when He read or heard His mother telling Him the story of 
Isaac carrying the wood on which, at God's command, he should be 
sacrificed by his own father, Abraham. The child bends under the 
wood, but, like an ox or a lamb, is blissfully unconscious of the 
doom to which he is destined. God sends an angel to stay the 
obedient father's hand, and furnishes another victim; but for our 
ungrateful sakes He sends an angel to hand the bitter cup of the 
Passion, that the new Isaac is to drink to the dregs. Isaac's burden 
was to Christ the Cross in shadow. It was no mere fancy of a 
Messianic mission, but His inherent divine insight into "how the 
Scriptures should be fulfilled" that made Him see the outline of 
the Cross in the life of His great prototype Moses, whom the 
Messias was to succeed as a "leader like to himself" over the new 
people of God, His Church. As Moses He plunged the wood — 
the Cross He died on — into life's bitter waters and sweetened them 
for all time ; but at what cost to Himself God and His holy angels 
alone can tell. Through a simple piece of wood — a mere rod — 
Israel's great saviour and leader performed all the wonders re- 
corded in the story of his life. God ordered him to throw it on 
the ground. "He cast it down, and it was turned into a serpent: 
so that Moses fled from it" (Exodus iv, 3). Did not Our Lord see 
in this rod — the Cross — that thing of shame and pain from which 
all men, and even He Himself, should shrink as from a vile and 
loathsome thing, as "from the face of a serpent" ? The shadows of 
signs and wonders done by Moses with that same rod must have 
shown Him what His own Cross should effect through "the travail 
of his soul." The rod of Moses again turned into a serpent, swal- 
lowed up those of the Egyptian magicians, just as the Cross of 
Christ, in its triumphant march, destroys all forms of worldly wis- 



THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS 



9 



dom, power, and wonder. Yet the shadow of the "holy rood," that 
lightened our burden, that delivered us from the ten plagues of 
Egypt — the various forms of deadly sin under which we groaned — 
pressed heavily on Him. Sorrow, too, must have filled His heart 
at the thought of the evil use to which men would turn His Cross, 
the very instrument of their delivery. "He was sent for the fall, as 
well as for the resurrection of man in Israel" — "his Cross," a sign 
that should be contradicted. The last plague inflicted by the rod 
of Moses was of dense darkness. His Cross rejected, and scorned, 
covers the land with thick spiritual darkness. See the once fair 
lands, where the crescent has displaced the Cross, or where the 
Holy Rood has been ruthlessly pulled down and the graven image 
of Pharao and his satellites put in its place. This, too, was a shadow 
of Calvary falling on His soul. 

The Cross, that "should redeem Israel from all her iniquity" — 
that, like the cloud, black and dark, on the side of the Egyptians, 
and all soul-hardened nations — was yet a "light to the Gentiles" and 
all "true Israelites." The people of God were baptized in the Red 
Sea of the blood He shed on it; but hardened sinners are drowned 
in it. For in its very shadow Our Lord foresaw that the Cross, 
which is "wisdom to the truly wise," is yet "folly and a scandal 
to the evil and the worldly wise." The wielding of the rod of Moses 
saved the people of God, but hardened the hosts of Pharao ; so the 
lifting up of the Cross of Christ is a source both of salvation and 
perdition. Personal hatred of Christ and His Cross, upheld in the 
Church, is as intense to-day as when it was laid upon His shoulders 
amid the exultant shrieks of His enemies. The shadow of this sin 
was as vivid to Him as its reality is to us, and far more painful. 

Though true God, Our Lord was also true man — a man among 
men. He even called Himself "the son of man." Now in His deep 
intimacy with her from whom alone He held this title, He must 
have often alluded to David — the pride and glory of their nation — 
the founder and head of the family to which they belonged. But 
the vision of His mind did not regard David in all the pomp, 
splendor and glory of dominion ; but David, poor, hunted down by 
his enemies, hiding in dens and caverns — David, the bard of sorrow, 
over whose soul the "waters of affliction had flowed." He saw in 
David the shadow of His own unquestionable royalty; but it was 
the royalty of the palace of Caiphas, and hall of Pilate — the royalty 
denoted by the crown of thorns, the purple rag, and the scepter of 



IO 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



the reed. His courtiers are the mocking soldiers, who, with cruel 
gibes and coarse jests, bow the knee before Him, saying, "Hail, 
King of the Jews"; and the throne they prepare for Him is the 
hard knotty cross. This was the kingly dignity that now cast its 
shadow on His soul. True, He foresaw that He should reign in 
absolute sovereignty over His kingdom, and in the hearts of all 
true Israelites, to the end of time ; but this vision was clouded by the 
shadow of the hosts that should reject His royalty, do their utmost 
to dismember His kingdom, abandon, in short, Him, "the fountain 
of living water, and dig to themselves fountains that hold not water." 

He was thus ever "the man of sorrows." A criminal, condemned 
to death without reprieve, knows not the sweets of rest after toil, 
the joys of fancy, the pleasures of hope. His punishment is ever 
before him; for anticipation of pain is even worse than the pain 
itself. So was it with Our Lord, the all holy and all perfect. His 
was not a soul hardened by sin, or a body besotted with vice ; but re- 
fined and delicate ; and so fitted for pain and sacrifice beyond words 
to describe. We can thus understand how the dark shadows of 
His coming Passion gathered over His soul in pondering over the 
revelations made to prophet, seer and king. The details, as de- 
scribed by holy David and Isaias, are startling in their realism. 
What must they have been to the Chief Sufferer, who as Eternal 
Wisdom revealed them. "The chastisement of our peace was upon 
him, and by his bruises we are healed." "All we, like sheep, have 
gone astray : and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." 
"For the wickedness of my people have I struck him" (Isaias liii, 
6,8). 

II. Deeper and deeper fell the shadows of the Cross as He 
advanced in years — through the long period of His hidden life at 
Nazareth, and the short term of His public career. Even in the 
glimpses of kingship and glory, accorded on Mount Thabor, and on 
His solemn entry into Jerusalem, Calvary and its Cross were ever in 
view. In full consciousness of the treatment He was to receive, He 
set His face steadfastly "to go to Jerusalem," "he went before them" 
to keep the pasch. How clearly impressed the shadow of His com- 
ing sufferings were upon His mind we gather from His own words, 
"Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and the son of man shall be be- 
trayed to the chief priests, and they shall condemn him to death, 
and shall deliver him to the Gentiles, and they shall mock him, and 



THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS 



1 1 



spit on him, and scourge him and kill him, and the third day he 
shall rise again" (Mark x, 33, 34). 

He was thus drawing near to the valley of the shadow. The 
triumphant entry on Palm Sunday forms the receding light that 
lengthens the shadows of the days that follow. His whole life was 
thus the Passion in anticipation — the Cross casting its dark shadow 
before. His thirty-three years were but the foreground of the 
Crucifixion. 

The shadows keep deepening, till they culminate in Gethsemani; 
and the fury of the storm, raised by the powers of darkness, breaks 
in upon His soul. The spot where the Passion proper began looks 
calm and peaceful to-day, as it lies sleeping in the sun, under the 
shadow of Olivet, and facing the dark frowning rocks that encircle 
Jerusalem. The old olive trees, or shoots - from them, that once 
cast their shadows on the Man of Sorrows still survive to remind 
the pilgrim of that night of deep gloom, when the soul of the Son 
of Man, weighed down with unspeakable anguish, was "sorrowful 
even unto death." Why the God-man, whose face on Thabor "did 
shine as the sun," and at sight of whom legions of evil spirits fled 
in terror, should now crouch and tremble like a terrified babe, 
where there was nothing to alarm Him save the weird moaning of 
the wind and the shadows of the olive branches, is one of the mys- 
teries of the Passion. Thus far it is only the anticipation, merely 
the shadow of coming evil, that presses on His soul. The prophet 
Isaias foretold, as subsequent events showed, that under lash and 
thorn, and nail, and insult, He should be "dumb as a lamb before his 
shearer, and should not open his mouth" (Isaias liii, 7). Yet here, 
under the mere shadow of the Cross, He cries out in anguish, "My 
soul is sorrowful even unto death." He felt it would seem the 
suspension of His divinity — the marshalling of the powers of evil, 
hell let loose on His humanity, in its loneliness. Holy souls when 
nearest to God in the keenest anguish have deemed Him absent. 
In the maelstrom of fast encircling woes we seem to hear Him 
utter the Psalmist's words, "The waters have come in even to my 
soul. I stuck fast in the mire of the deep ; and there is no sure 
standing. I am come into the depths of the sea, and a tempest 
hath overwhelmed me" (Psalms, lxxiii). He feels Himself now the 
"scapegoat" of our race. He is coming into close contact with 
sin; and the anguish of His soul at the view of our iniquities, and 



I 2 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



the little profit sinners would draw from His Passion, cause the 
blood to ooze from His body. "Quae utilitas in sanguine meo." 
God is punishing Him. He is veiling Himself that "by his bruises 
we may be healed." "For the sins of my people I struck him." 
Wicked men are plotting His death ; the tramp of their armed hire- 
lings, led by the traitor disciple, breaks in upon the silence of the 
night. Dim lights are flickering in the palace of Caiphas ; and the 
shadows of the Cross are melting away before the grim reality. 
What a terrible share they had in the sufferings of Our Saviour 
we learn from the agonizing cry they wrested from His sacred lips 
ere those of the traitor came in contact with them, "Father, if it 
be possible, let this chalice pass from me, yet not my will but thine 
be done." 

We, too, dear brethren, live under a cloud. Dark shadows over- 
hang the brightest and sunniest lives. Tears follow smiles, even in 
sinless, light-hearted children. The gayest and most frivolous have 
longer spells of gloom than of pleasure, say what they may. The 
future, in most cases, throws more shadow than light upon the 
present. Death alone casts a deep dark shadow over all lives in 
cutting short all present and prospective pleasures. Even to those 
who have lost all belief in a future life it is a marfeast and a 
destroyer. 

People shrink from the Cross, yet it is the retrospect of our past 
crosses, not of our pleasures, that brings us peace, joy and rest. 
And why ? Because Christ in embracing has exalted the Cross and 
ennobled the idea of sacrifice that it implies. He alone, in the might 
of His divine power, could have changed the Cross, symbol of de- 
grading crime, worse than gallows or guillotine, into an altar, a 
throne and a pulpit. Its very shadow to Him was life-long pain; 
but to us it is light, revealing the mercy, the love, the tender bounty 
of God. Thrice did He sink under its weight; but He has made it 
sweet, and light, and easy to us. 

It is a law, and yet a mystery, that in all departments of life, 
not pleasure, but sacrifice, leads to glory. "No cross, no crown." 
The way to bliss leads not by Thabor, but by Calvary. Suffering, 
too, and sacrifice, are not only personal, but vicarious. We are not 
isolated in our joys, no more are we in our sorrows. We suffer not 
only with but for one another. His was the transcendent vicarious 
offering ; ours derive all their value from His. Every sorrow, every 



THE SHADOW OF THE CROSS 



pain, every act of unselfish sacrifice, in union with His, bears the 
divine stamp of the Cross. 

No wonder the shadow of the Cross fell heavy on Our Lord ; for 
it was the shadow of a wicked world's sin. It points out the awful- 
ness of moral evil and the need of a divine Saviour. Reading sin in 
the gloom and darkness of Gethsemani and Calvary will help us 
to realize how fearful it must be, since a divine victim was required 
to atone for it. Sin it was that nailed this victim to the Cross. "All 
we, like sheep, have gone astray: . . . and the Lord hath laid 
on him the iniquity of us all." He was offered because it was His 
own will. "He shall be led as a sheep to the slaughter and shall 
be dumb as a lamb before his shearer" (Isaias liii, 6, 7). While re- 
vealing the dread malice of sin which nailed Christ to the Cross, it 
preaches the necessity of blotting out sin in our own souls by 
sincere repentance and the application of Christ's cleansing blood 
in the Sacrament of Penance. 

The Cross has introduced a new standard into life. It stands, 
and ever will stand, in diametrical opposition to the world and its 
ways, and thoughts, and ideals. It is for us, then, who love the 
Saviour, to love His Cross, inseparable from Him; to nestle under 
its shadow — to make it our banner, our flag, our standard. It is 
the only way to heaven. "Via crucis, via lucis." To follow the way 
of the Cross is to follow Christ; and "he who follows me walketh 
not in darkness," saith the Lord. 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 




II. THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS 

"Jesus said to him: Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" 
— Luke xxii, 48. 

SYNOPSIS. — Introduction. — The passion proper begins with the betrayal 
of Judas. Desertion, or betrayal on part of friends, when help and 
sympathy most needed, one of the hardest trials to bear. Jesus left 
alone, in a sea of sorrow. His very love of "His own" measure of the 
pangs He felt, in desertion of all, and betrayal on part of one. De- 
cadence of Judas long a source of grief to our Saviour. Judas, type 
of the traitor and informer to all time. 

I. Was a time server. Saw our Lord losing in popularity, and 
throwing away His chances of becoming a king. Judas dreamed only of 
place and power and wealth in a restored Jewish sovereignty. A spiritual 
kingdom had no meaning for him. Avarice his main vice, would at 
least gain something from wreck of his hopes. Bargains for betrayal 
of Christ. Story of the betrayal. 

II. Feels himself a Cain. His crime haunts him as a specter. 
His sin has found him out. The strange thing is, he seems to repent 
and atone for his crime by returning the accursed money he earned 
by it; but his sorrow is loveless and hopeless; consequently, ineffectual. 
His grief was human: no divine element in it, could not win pardon. 
One act of true contrition, a movement of genuine repentance, would have 
restored him to grace; but alas! it was too late. Tragic death of Judas. 

III. Judas, a type of those who fail to live up to grace of their state 
— the bad priest, the bad bishop, the bad religious, and the rest. First 
bad communicant. Highest call may result in failure. Lessons taught 
in betrayal of Jesus. Are we traitors to Christ? Do not many of us 
hear the Master whisper into our ears, "Judas, dost thou betray the Son 
of Man with a kiss?" 

Introduction. — The storm that was gathering over "the Man of 
Sorrows" broke upon Him in Gethsemani. "Great as the sea is 
thy sorrow," was the brief prophetic description of the Passion. 
Excess marked its every stage, from the agony in the garden, till 
death on the Cross. There are depths in the sea that no plummet 
has yet sounded. So are there in the sufferings of Christ, though 
saints and divines have been exploring and sounding them for 
centuries. 

The great sacrifice consummated on Calvary begins with the be- 
trayal of the divine victim by Judas. In the whole gamut of 
mental pain endured by Our Lord none was more keenly felt than 
the desertion of His Apostles. The abandonment of friends at the 
moment when we stand most in need of their help and sympathy 
adds an acute pang to sorrow; but the Apostles were more than 



THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS 



x 5 



mere friends to Christ, they were His dearest and most intimate 
associates. He loved His little community, "His own," as He 
called them, "to the end," with infinite tenderness. Hence the deep 
pain He felt in their shameful desertion. A special mark of infamy, 
however, clings to the memory of Judas. His very name, indeed, 
stands as the synonym of the most hateful and loathsome class 
known to us, the traitor or betrayer of the cause or society to which 
he belongs. Judas is the type of the false witness and perjured 
disciple. 

To note the decadence, the gradual hardening of heart — for the 
sin of Judas, unlike that of Peter, was no sudden impulse — in the 
case of His chosen Apostle, was ever a secret, pent-up grief of the 
Saviour. He felt as a good father or mother feels on seeing son 
or daughter wilfully treading the downward path to ruin — powerless 
to hinder or recall. For free will is so high a gift, so potent an 
endowment, that it ties, so to say, the very hand of God. It was a 
standing grief to the little band that formed the inner circle of the 
friends of "the Master," for in spite of their rough, blunt ways, 
and subsequent flight and terror, they were simple, and straight, and 
loyal, and loved Our Lord dearly and sincerely. Yet they heard 
Him repeatedly say, "One of you shall betray me," and from their 
intimate knowledge of his character must have suspected Iscariot. 
For one thing they were all Galileans, while he was a Jew. 

The soul of union is the faith, the trust, the loyalty of its mem- 
bers. To sell one's country, to betray one's friends, to barter away 
the life and liberty of others, is deemed the worst form of criminal 
offense. Every cause and nation has its traitors; but, as I said, 
Judas is the standing type and common name for all. Others traf- 
ficked in the lives and destinies of men and nations ; but he sold for 
thirty pieces of money his God, and, as far as in him lay, endangered 
the highest and holiest cause the world has ever seen. Justly, there- 
fore, is his name held in execration to-day. Like all the actors in 
the tragedy of the Passion, Judas lives as a type — the type of the 
traitor — for all time. 

The story of the betrayal is quickly told. It was no sudden im- 
pulse that drove Judas to hand his Master over to the fury of His 
enemies. It was not his first, but his last, gross act of disloyalty 
to Christ. Self had usurped the place of God in his heart. The 
betrayal was the last link in a chain of sin. By words, and signs, 
and deeds, Our Lord had repeatedly striven to stay the downward 



i6 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



course of His erring disciple. But his ruling passion — greed for 
gold — had gained the mastery. Like all sinners, he had fallen into 
the devil's trap: "Do my work, said the evil one, and I shall do 
yours." "All these things I will give thee if thou wilt fall down 
and adore me," a tempting bargain ; but, as Judas afterward found 
to his cost, a lying and deceitful one. But needless to moralize at 
this stage. "The die is cast." Christ, Judas thinks, is on the los- 
ing side. He is growing unpopular. He either would not or could 
not "restore the glory of the kingdom of Israel." He is a mere 
dreamer; and thirty pieces of solid silver, in his then frame of 
mind, were worth far more to him than all the visionary gain of a 
spiritual kingdom. The bargain with Christ's enemies is struck, 
and Judas, at the head of a hundred and twenty hirelings, makes 
for the garden of Gethsemani. 

There Our Lord and Saviour was in the throes of that stage of 
His Passion that we name, "the agony in the garden." It is the 
first of the five sorrowful mysteries, the beginning of the harrow- 
ing scenes that terminate on Calvary. Christ is in the deep waters 
of distress — alone, forsaken, abandoned, even by God. He begins 
to feel the pangs of the victim "striken for our sins," "bruised for 
our iniquities." In the abyss of His depression of soul He seeks 
the fellowship and sympathy of His chosen companions; but they 
sleep while He watches in pain. "I looked for one that would 
grieve together with me, but there was none; and for one that 
would comfort me, and there was none" (Ps. lxviii). The response 
to His request is the approach of the betrayer, and that betrayer 
His own disciple. "If my enemy had reviled me, I would verily 
have borne with it. But thou, a man of one mind with me, my 
guide and my familiar, who didst take sweet meats together with 
me in the house of God, we walked with consent" (Ps. liv). "Judas 
immediately going up to him saith, Hail, Rabbi, and he kissed him/' 
an embrace which Our Lord bent down to accept, for tradition tells 
us that Judas was a man of low stature, with dark scowling fea- 
tures and obese. He is now the moving spirit of the Lord's enemies, 
the leader of the "many dogs that encompass him," "the council of 
the malignant that now hold him besieged," "of them that open 
their mouths against the Christ, as a lion ravening and roaring" 
(Ps. xxi). 

Judas is now filling up the measure of his iniquities. He seals 
his own doom. "Better for that man if he had never been born." 



THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS 



i7 



Satan now enters into him, and he becomes "the son of perdition." 
The prophet's words seem to fit him to the letter, "Set thou the 
sinner over him, and may the devil stand at his right hand. When 
he is judged may he go out condemned. May there be none to help 
him ; because he remembered not to show mercy ; but persecuted the 
poor man and the beggar, and the broken in heart to put him to 
death" (Ps. cviii). The beads of blood were still pearling off that 
"Poor Man's" brow. That outcast and brokenhearted One was 
being "wounded for our sins," "God-stricken and forlorn," that we 
might be healed. The look cast by Christ, as He returned his em- 
brace, burned into the traitor's soul. 

"The multitude with swords and clubs soon did their work." 
The feeble attempt at defense is quickly overcome. The terrified 
disciples broke and fled. "The shepherd is struck and the sheep 
are scattered." True, the whole hireling gang fell back in con- 
fusion at His word and glance, a proof that he was no mere help- 
less victim of material force; but this "was their hour and that of 
the powers of darkness," and He goes as a meek lamb to the 
slaughter, "opening not his mouth." Christ, the Man-God, is gagged 
and led to judgment. Five times is He tried, or rather five times 
does He undergo the mocking ordeal of a trial. He is "in the net 
of the fowler." His enemies have been "those of his own house- 
hold." No human help is nigh, and by the "high will of heaven" 
divine help is arrested. "I am become as a man without help. I 
looked on the right hand, and there was no one that would know 
me. There is no one that hath regard to my soul" (Ps. cxli). He 
"will tread the winepress alone," He will accomplish the work "his 
heavenly Father gave him to do." 

II. Meanwhile, what of Judas, the main actor in this phase 
of Our Lord's Passion. He, too, has done his work. He has sold 
his God. He has betrayed his Lord and Master, whom, if he did 
not fully realize to be God, he yet knew to be far beyond all other 
men, just, pure, holy and innocent. He has the wages of sin in his 
girdle, but it burns. The devil, he finds out, is a bad paymaster. 
His dupes have ever the worst of the bargain, even in this life ; and 
chief among them is Judas. Money, he discovers, is not everything, 
and, above all, money ill-gotten. Conscience, long dormant in petty 
thefts, has a rude awakening in gross crime. "His sin has found 
him out." He flattered himself that he might deceive his Master 
under the mask of friendship; and that, most likely, Christ would 



iS 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



escape his enemies, as He had so often done before. In this way 
he would cheat the hypocritical crew leagued against the Lord and 
satisfy his own greed for gain at their expense. But now his well- 
laid plan has failed. Christ is a manacled prisoner in the hands 
of His foes. Perjured witnesses are now, perhaps, swearing His 
life away ; and at any moment He may be "delivered to the Gentiles," 
the brutal soldiery of cruel Rome, to be tortured to death on the 
Cross. No supernatural agency has intervened to save Him. The 
priests and Pharisees are triumphant. Judas is in the grip of despair. 
The brand of Cain is upon him ; for he has slain, not only a brother, 
but a "prophet of the most high God" — one in some mysterious 
way the Son of God. The pale face of the Master, with its look 
of anguish, and tears of blood trickling down His brow, rise up 
before him, and His last words of mingled pity and reproach, 
"Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss ?" burn into his 
very soul. His sin haunts him like a specter. Entangled in the 
net of evil he has woven round his soul, he wanders aimlessly about 
the dark valley of Hinnom till the morning dawned. Unable to 
bear any longer the crushing weight of the blood money he car- 
ried, he rushed to the Temple, where the priests, with broad phy- 
lacteries around their brows, but venom and hatred for God's 
anointed in their hearts, had come to pray, he casts the thirty pieces 
of money at their feet, exclaiming, "I have sinned in betraying in- 
nocent blood." The man they had suborned and tempted to betray 
an innocent life must, by his words, have roused them to a sense 
of the guilty plot in which they were engaged. They, too, must 
have felt the lash of conscience ; but they were hardened hypocrites 
— "blind and leaders of the blind." Their sole response to their 
guilty dupe, as they spurned him from their presence, was, "What is 
that to us, look thou to it" (John v, 4) — words that presaged his 
doom and theirs. 

The strange part of Judas' story is that he seemed to repent, and 
yet was not forgiven. Like penitent David, he cries out, "Peccavi," 
"I have sinned in betraying innocent blood," and casts at the feet 
of his fellow criminals the price of his treason. But alas for him, 
his sorrow was loveless and hopeless. The necessary elements of 
true contrition were wanting. It was human not divine grief, 
founded only in disappointment, disillusion and despair — a mere 
human experience of the "hard ways of sin." Even then an act 
of sincere sorrow would have restored him to grace. Christ was 



THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS 



19 



at the gate. He stood knocking. But Judas lingered, hesitated, 
and was lost The grace went to Peter. His lamp was out. Its 
oil had run dry. The glance of Christ that softened Peter hardened 
Judas. The soil of his heart, through long lack of tilling, had 
grown hard and thorny ; so that good seed could not root in it. 

The remainder of his story is told in few words. Rushing out 
from the Temple, into the long gloomy valley of Hinnom — the Tophat 
of old — ere night's shadows had rolled away, despair on his face, 
hell in his soul, he came to the summit of the rocky heights around, 
and fastening his neck with the girdle or halter he was wearing 
to the nearest tree, he let himself swing over the abyss below. 
Striking against the jagged rock he burst asunder. Darkness passes 
with the night. Sunless caverns and the dark depths of the sea 
may one day be lighted up by the orb of day, but alas ! on the soul 
of Judas, the betrayer of the Lord, the light of God's countenance 
will never shine. For those that live without repentance there is a 
ray of hope, but none for those that die without. Better for that 
man "never to have been born," says Our Lord. What He thus 
said of Judas He meant also for us. When Christ on His way to 
Calvary told the "daughters of Jerusalem to weep, not for him, but 
for themselves and their children," was mother, or wife, or sister 
of Judas among the mourners ? 

III. To us, whose eyes, now open, are riveted on the person 
and office of the victim of the treason of Judas, his crime seems 
monstrous and unparalleled. Time has but deepened and heightened 
it. With Satan, he is pre-eminently the "adversary of God," a "son 
of perdition." 

And yet, as St. Augustine says, "There is nothing that one man 
does which another may not do if not helped by him by whom all 
things were made." "What is this that hath been done? The 
same that shall be done" (Eccl. i, 9). Judas sold Christ for thirty 
pieces of silver. Are there not thousands, knowing more about 
Christ's person than Judas did, who daily sell Him for less. Their 
crime is less striking, less picturesque in the bad sense of the term, 
but in God's sight none the less real. All down the ages has not 
holy Church to mourn over those who sell her to the enemies of 
her spouse? Who were the great heresiarchs but men who had 
once, like Judas, feasted on the body and blood of the Lord — nay, 
had power "to do this" in remembrance of Him; and yet after 



20 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 

went forth to betray Him. Of them, as of Judas, Christ could 
say, "I planted thee a chosen vineyard: how then art thou turned 
unto me into that which is good for nothing and strange vineyard" 
(Jererru ii, 21). Woe to "the salt that has lost its savor." Life 
gives and spreads life; but the dead spread infection and death. 
So with Judas and his like. 

His fall warns us that a high call and even close intimacy with 
Christ are no guarantee of present holiness, much less of future 
salvation. It reminds us all, priests and people, teachers and 
scholars, in the school of Christ, that we must "work out our salva- 
tion in fear and trembling." It is what we become, and grow into, 
at the finish of our career, and not what we were at the start, that 
determines our worth and fate. The tone and color of our thoughts 
regarding the character of Judas are usually taken from his last 
fearful crime and tragic end. Yet he was once an enthusiastic fol- 
lower of the Lord. He was once young and innocent. Nay, such 
was his zeal in Christ's cause, such his eagerness to "seek the king- 
dom of God and his glory," that he was admitted into the inner 
circle, the privileged twelve who should follow the Lord wheresoever 
He went. He was one of Christ's bodyguard, in short. It is quite 
possible that his motives at first for "leaving all things and follow- 
ing Our Lord" were not of the highest. Like some of the other 
raw, untrained disciples, he may have had visions of an earthly 
kingdom of God, wherein he might play an important part- The 
new light that had arisen in the East, the great Messias, might yet 
restore "the glory of Israel" and drive the hated strangers from the 
land. He differed from the others in never rising to the idea of a 
spiritual kingdom at all. He was shrewd, pushing and worldly- 
wise, like the rest of his tribe ; and hence he was made treasurer of 
Our Lord's household. He carried the bag. 

For a time popularity was forced upon Our Lord; but He ever 
shrank from it. The people would fain have made Him king, but 
He ever withdrew from His admirers. "He hid himself," the 
Gospel says. Then they began to doubt as to whether He was the 
Messias, the Son of David, the promised one of Israel at all, and 
among them Judas. True, this popularity flickered up again on 
the Palm Sunday, but it had long been on the wane. Those who 
hailed Him as King at the beginning of the week were shrieking 
loudly for His blood ere its close. The mob is ever fickle if its idol 
is no flatterer. They did not want "a kingdom of heaven," and one 



THE BETRAYAL OF JUDAS 



2 I 



"of this world" Our Lord came not to found. Hence their rejec- 
tion of Him. 

Judas now deemed Our Lord's mission a failure. He doubted, 
waned in his loyalty, and turned traitor. He would gain something 
from the wreck of his Master's visionary kingdom, and to compass 
this end sold that Master for a paltry thirty pieces of silver. 

This was the culmination of a long series of sins of avarice. This 
Gospel says he was a thief. He had begun by petty thefts from the 
common purse. Filthy lucre, greed, gain, howsoever got, hurried 
him on from bad to worse, till every shred of self-respect, all char- 
acter, as we say, was gone. At one period of life no doubt he would 
have shuddered at the excesses into which he fell; but like all set 
sinners, he grew worse and worse, till, after his crowning act of 
infamy, he died unwept for and unrepentant. 

The fate of Judas illustrates the truth that there is no standing 
still in the path either of righteousness or unrighteousness. We go 
forward or backward. We turn to the light or from it, we go up 
the "mountain of God" or down it. Like a hoat on a swift-flowing 
river, if we pull not vigorously up stream we drift aimlessly and 
helplessly down it. "He who perseveres not to the end, he who 
putteth his hand to the plow and looketh back is not worthy of the 
kingdom." 

Like all actors in the Passion, Judas is a type for all time. He 
is, by no means, an isolated personage. The part he played in the 
tragedy of redemption is repeated and re-echoed in the story of all 
traitors to every good, holy and God-like cause, before and since. 

As with Judas, money, the hunger for gold, engenders traitors 
and informers, and both sows and feeds their vices. As I said, 
every land, every cause has had its Judases, who put self and wealth 
before honor, before truth, before their country, or before their 
God. 

Ask those who, called to preach Christ, and Him crucified, yet in 
views and conduct preach the world and its vanities ; ask the many 
who follow Our Lord for a share of "the loaves and fishes," and 
deny or desert Him in the hour of His loneliness and need; ask 
treacherous wives and unfaithful husbands are they not walking 
in the footsteps of Judas? Inside the fold of the Master, Christ is 
daily betrayed with a kiss — outwardly knelt to, honored and ad- 
dressed as Lord, inwardly disbelieved, scorned, handed over, gagged 
and bound, to His enemies. 



22 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 

Conclusion. — Brethren, "what has been may be again." The 
infamy of Judas finds its counterpart in many Christian lives to-day. 
As we read the Holy Father's late appeal to some erring brethren, 
to renounce worldliness under the mask of modernism, do we not 
seem to hear Christ in His vicar uttering the words, "Judas, dost 
thou betray the Son of Man with a kiss?" Let the story of Judas 
warn us against false confidence. The appearance of health often 
masks internal rottenness and decay. Flow T ers may bloom and wave 
over dead men's graves. The Cross, the banner of Christ, may 
flutter over our heads, and His image glitter on our breasts, while 
that of his adversary is engraven indelibly on our hearts. Are we 
consciously nursing any vice that effects a cleavage between Christ 
and us? Then we are not of "his own/' but Satan's. Are we vic- 
tims of avarice, or any other deadly sin? If so, we are digging 
our souls' graves. We are trenching in the heart those cisterns 
that hold not the waters of grace. Do we not hear the warning 
voice of Christ, "Amen I say to you, one of you shall betray me." 
Let us pause ere we, too, fall into the guilty ways of Judas, who 
began by loving and serving Christ, and ended by betraying Him. 
Are there not souls here present into whose ears the voice of Jesus 
seems to whisper, "Judas, dost thou betray the Son of Man with 
a kiss?" 



THE DENIAL OF PETER 



2 3 



III. THE DENIAL OF PETER 



"I say to thee, Peter, the cock shall not crow this day, till thou thrice 
deniest that thou knowest me." — Luke xxii, 34. 

SYNOPSIS. — Introduction. — The betrayal of Judas and denial of Peter 
twin mental sorrows of Jesus in His sacred Passion. Christ, as He 
stood before Annas, the traitorous kiss of Judas still lingering on His 
lips, hears the oaths of His chief Apostle, denying that he knew Him. The 
ring of evil drawing tightly around Him; "No friend, no helper near." 

I. Christ and His Apostles. What they were to each other. Char- 
acter of Peter. His strength and his weakness. His imprudent zeal 
in the garden of olives, and subsequent flight with the rest. His half- 
hearted return, and following "afar off." Story of the denial. His 
repentance. How it differed from that of Judas. Life-long term of sor- 
row, especially on hearing the cock crow. 

II. Peter's fall, not one of malice; due to weakness, in hour of 
trial. Causes of his fall — self-confidence, impulsiveness, inconstancy. 
Teaches us to avoid occasion of sin, especially bad company. 

III. His sincere repentance. The triple confession he made in 
atonement for his triple denial. Two monuments in Rome. Keep 
memory of St. Peter fresh. In this phase of Our Lord's Passion, two 
thoughts strike us — the loving mercy of Christ to the fallen, and next, 
the speedy and earnest repentance of Peter. 

Conclusion. — Practical exhortation to rise from sin to true repent- 
ance. 

Introduction. — One Apostle betrays his Master, another denies 
Him. This double apostasy must have deepened the anguish of 
Our Lord in the bitter sorrows of His Passion. To be deserted by 
one's closest friends in the hour of need is a crushing blow, but to be 
betrayed and ignored is still worse. As He stood before Annas, 
shackled like a thief or murderer caught red-handed in crime, the 
treacherous kiss of Judas still lingering on his lips, the oaths of 
Peter, denying that he knew Him, struck in upon His ears. The 
ring of evil was fast closing in around the "Holy One of Israel." 
Hell was loose. He stood alone, deserted and undefended, in a 
circle of triumphant and pitiless foes. Judas has done his satanic 
work. His loving friend and Master is now a wounded bird in the 
net of the fowler, a meek and gentle lamb thrown to the wolves ; 
and to add to the pangs of His stricken heart the one disciple who 
had loudly professed fidelity to the bitter end declares with an oath 
that He was an utter stranger to him. "Oh all ye who pass by the 
way, see if there is any sorrow like unto my sorrow." "I have 
trodden the winepress alone." "I looked around and there was no 
helper." 



24 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



The denial of Peter as a phase of Our Lord's Passion is the sub- 
ject of my discourse to-day. In the Apostle's fall and repentance 
we may learn a lesson of love and sympathy for Our Lord and 
of useful warning to ourselves. 

I. The story of Peter's denial is a sad and a base one. The 
scene in the garden of Gethsemani is over. Our Lord, bound with 
rough cords, is led, as a coarse criminal, to undergo a sort of pre- 
liminary trial before Annas, the deposed high priest, who still 
wields great influence with his son-in-law Caiphas, the actual holder 
of the office. The full court of the Sanhedrin could not legally 
try prisoners by night. The good Shepherd was struck, and His 
little flock of timid Galileans were scattered to the winds — Peter, 
who had made a brave show of resistance, fleeing with the rest. 
The Apostles were all deeply attached to the person of Our Lord, 
and had boundless faith in His power and Messiaship, as far as 
they understood the term. As for His spiritual kingdom — a Church 
embracing all nations — they did not rise to what it meant. The 
Holy Ghost had not yet come down upon them. They dreamt of 
place and power in a restored earthly kingdom, like that of David. 
They were proud of Our Lord, so to say. They thought no earthly 
power could prevail against Him. Had He not stilled the angry 
waves, conquered legions of devils more powerful than men, con- 
founded His enemies, restored the dead to life? Surely, sinners 
would have no power over Him. God would intervene to protect 
His Holy One. But when they saw their divine Master in the 
clutches of the law, bound and dragged away, a helpless prisoner, 
their faith and courage gave way. The instinct of self-preservation 
gained the mastery. They shrank from danger, and fled. Peter, 
it is true, drew the sword, and even committed an act of violence in 
his Master's defense, but he soon lost heart, wavered and fled. From 
what we glean of his character in the Gospel and elsewhere, we 
have grounds for inferring that he was impulsive, generous and 
enthusiastic, but irresolute and inconstant. He idolized his Master, 
and in his warmhearted way ever gave vent to the feelings upper- 
most in his heart, of unselfish love, loyalty, devotion and blind faith. 
He deeply resented baseness and treachery, and was roused to in- 
dignation at the bare thought of one of his companions betraying 
his Lord. He would die, he said, and no doubt sincerely meant it, 
rather than deny Him. But panic seized him in common with the 
others, and Christ is left to "tread the winepress alone." Tempta- 



THE DENIAL OF PETER 



25 



tion reveals weakness as well as strength, and so did it in Peter's 
case. He was over-confident in his own power. He forgot that 
true friendship and love are best tested in the hour of misfortune 
and trial. 

Peter soon grew ashamed of his cowardice and desertion, turns 
back and follows his Master "afar off." Previously, to get near his 
Lord, he had not hesitated to trust his feet to the treacherous waves ; 
but now, cold, tepid, irresolute, he follows Him "afar off." His place 
was to stand near his Master in the supreme moment of danger, 
and, if necessary, die with Him, rather than lounge near a snug fire 
in the midst of his Master's enemies. But we anticipate. 

Gaining admittance through the influence of another disciple, 
probably St. John, personally known either to the servants or even 
high priest himself, Peter makes his way to a fire, lighted in the 
outer court by the soldiers and attendants, and stood warming him- 
self, as if in nowise interested in the cruel proceedings taking place 
a few paces away. Laden with chains, His face covered with 
bruises and filthy spittle, the Lord and Master stands in mock trial 
before a venomous judge, while the disciple listens with apparent 
unconcern to the gibes and jeers of those around. Eyeing him 
curiously, a servant maid, the only one of her sex who seems to 
have taken an unsympathetic part in the Passion, said, "Thou also 
wast with Jesus of Nazareth ; but he denied saying, I neither know 
nor understand what thou sayest" (Mark xiv). "Woman, I know 
him not." Conscience-stricken for his base denial, he moves out to 
the vestibule to escape notice. "He went forth before the court, 
and the cock crew." The ominous sound merely told the approach 
of dawn. The maid persistently clung to her opinion, and told it 
to others, some of whom followed Peter out, accosting him with the 
words, "Thou also art one of them, And again he denied with an 
oath, that I know not the man" (Matt. xxvi). He still lingers 
about, nailed to the spot, fascinated as by some secret spell. Mean- 
while, insults and blows are raining on his sacred Master's person. 
Peter's place, and he knew it, was either by his Master's side or out 
from the hall, away from danger. He, too, was chained and 
gagged. Grace was rejected, the voice of conscience unheeded. 
Evil had fastened on him, and now a third, and his last, fall crowns 
his apostasy. Not that he lost his faith, for Peter's faith never 
faltered, either before or after the divine promise, but he wavered 
in loyalty, he failed to "confess Christ before men," nay, more, he 



26 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



openly denied, was ashamed of his Master, while all the time secretly 
believing in Him. The very strength of his faith and depth of his 
love made him all the more guilty, and intensified his Master's grief. 
He still flitted about the fire, like a moth round a candle, till "they 
came that stood by, and said to Peter, Surely thou art also one of 
them, for even thy speech doth discover thee. Then he began to 
curse and swear that he knew not the man" (Matt. xxvi). Thus, 
while Christ is victim of the hollow mockery of a trial, the sole 
purpose of which is conviction, within, His chief disciple is, with 
oaths and imprecations, denying Him without. His boasted devo- 
tion and undying love end in denial and blasphemy. He was now 
fully alive to his guilt. Could he ever dare to look His beloved 
Master in the face again? It was then that the herald of the dawn 
carried its third warning message to his heart. While Our Lord 
was being led through the court, either to prison or to Caiphas, he 
cast a glance upon Peter. The very oaths of His recreant disciple 
had probably reached His ears. Not a word passed between them. 
The Gospel merely says, "The Lord looked on Peter" ; but that 
look spoke volumes of sadness, of pity and of love. It penetrated 
the heart and flashed light, and sorrow, and love. The foun- 
tains of the heart's abyss were opened, and tears of true con- 
trition, of mingled shame and self-condemnation gushed forth. 
"And going forth he wept bitterly." The true Peter, the impulsive, 
warmhearted disciple and lover of Jesus, stood revealed. The 
glance of Jesus had burned into his soul, and the sinner left the hall 
of judgment a penitent saint. 

Jesus had looked also on Judas with inviting tenderness, but there 
was no penitential response. Black despair and long cherished 
habits of evil shut out the grace of God, whereas in Peter it found 
ready entrance and glad welcome. Judas typifies the repentance 
of despair, Peter that of hope and love. Sin ever does and ever will 
create a Judas or a Peter. It leads either to despair and impenitence 
or to hope and sorrow. Peter, model of true penitents, did not go on 
in sin "grieving the Holy Spirit," but turned at once to God by 
sincere repentance. Tradition tells us that his cheeks were ever 
afterward furrowed with the tears shed in the bitterness of grief 
for his fall, and that he never heard the cock crow at break of 
day without dropping on his knees and asking his dear Lord for 
mercy and contrition. 

Peter's fall is a striking object lesson to all time of man's inherent 



THE DENIAL OF PETER 



2J 



spiritual weakness. The head of the apostolic college, "Christ's 
other self," trained under the Master's own eye, falls, swiftly, 
deeply, shamefully. A prying woman's curiosity, dread of the jeers 
and gibes of worthless scoundrels, made him deny the highest, the 
noblest and tenderest of masters. He was neither traitor nor 
coward in the usual sense of the terms. Far from it. He was ever 
to the front, the most fearless and zealous of the twelve. Withal, 
he fell; and so may we all. If the oaks and cedars yield so easily 
to the storm, what may we not expect from feeble twigs and bend- 
ing branches! 

II. Peter's sin was not one of malice. He fell through moral 
weakness. He was not, and never had been, hopelessly bad. His 
character had not grown vicious through long sinning and resist- 
ance to the light, as in the case of Judas, the betrayer. No one be- 
comes good or bad through single acts. There were weak ele- 
ments, dangerous tendencies in his character that, if not repressed, 
might have led to final ruin. St. Theresa, we are told, was shown 
the place reserved for her in hell had she not overcome certain 
dangerous inclinations of soul — tendencies, likely, that were, in the 
world's eyes, the basis of her popularity and the esteem and love 
she ever inspired. So with St. Peter. He was a very human and 
very loveable character. But there were faults, possibly seeds of 
great vices. There was, in the first place, a strain of overweening 
self-confidence, that, in the spiritual order, is fatal. Self-reliance 
is deemed a good and strong point in character, and under reserve 
this is true ; but unless built or rooted on confidence in God's grace 
it is a hindrance. "I can do all things," says St. Paul, almost boast- 
fully, yet he adds, "in him who strengthens me." Both in nature 
and in grace God's part is the main factor ; but in the spiritual 
order particularly, both "to do and to wish" what is right come 
from Him. 

St. Peter trusted to his physical strength and natural love of 
Christ. He was ready to draw his sword against a cohort; he 
threw himself into the sea, as I said, to get near his Lord; yet he 
trembled before a servant maid. Now it is just moral courage, and 
not brute strength, that is wanted in life. It is not physical daring, 
but strength of will — the heroism of grace to stand out in defense 
of God and righteousness — that keeps us spiritually safe. In this 
Peter failed. So self-trustful was he that he paid no heed to Our 
Lord's warning prophecy. His impulsiveness, born of self-confi- 



2S 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



dence, to rush into, and worse still to remain in, a dangerous situa- 
tion, shrank and failed in the supreme moment of trial. True 
inward strength, springing from reliance in God, was wanting, and 
his boasted loyalty proved to be as chaff before the wind. "Though 
I should die with thee yet shall I never deny thee," were brave 
words, and would have been justifiable, had they been qualified by 
an expression of confidence in Almighty God. He trusted to un- 
aided nature, and nature failed him in the moment of spiritual 
danger. It is easy to be a hero or a martyr in dream and fancy, 
but quite another thing to be so in action. It is easy to pitch one's 
tent on Thabor, but a very different matter to take one's stand on 
Calvary. To stand by Christ's side m distributing "the loaves and 
fishes," calming the waves, expelling evil spirits, holding the multi- 
tude spellbound by His words, refuting the false notions current 
in the piety and wisdom of the day, Peter found a much easier task 
than to cling to his Lord in chains, buffetted, spat upon, "the scorn 
of men and the outcast of the people." And yet the latter is the 
only true test of discipleship, as Peter fearlessly showed in after life. 

Did time permit we might add other grounds of explanation of 
Peter's fall, his impulsiveness and consequent lack of steadiness. 
Peter had to be taught that God is not to be served by fits and 
starts, but steadily and perseveringly. He was full of fiery zeal 
and enthusiasm at one moment, and just as tepid and lukewarm the 
next. He would wage war on Christ's enemies singlehanded rather 
than be separated from Christ, and yet very soon after he was fol- 
lowing Him "afar off." His intemperate zeal in the garden is in 
striking contrast to his base coldness and apostasy in the council 
hall. Herein he is a type of the lukewarm and disloyal followers 
of Our Lord, who serve Him "ajar off" — who, during missions or 
retreats, or on certain occasions, are zealous to the verge of im- 
prudence, but who soon fall away in faith and piety, ending, per- 
haps, in betrayal or denial. Peter's fall teaches the necessity of 
never losing sight of our divine Master, of ever keeping in close 
touch with Him, cost it what it may. 

It is worthy of note, too, that Peter persisted in exposing himself 
to the danger of sin. Aware of his own moral weakness, feeling 
lack of courage and fear of the scoffer and the scorner, he mingles 
rashly among his Master's enemies — nay, in manner and conversa- 
tion, outwardly at least, becomes one of them. Bad company is the 
worst of all possible occasions of sin. The strongest go down be- 



THE DENIAL OF PETER 



29 



fore it. What of those that are at once weak and rash ? Two points 
are clear in this matter: God will not help souls wilfully exposing 
themselves to needless danger; and next, that most souls are 
spiritually too weak to help themselves ; for it is ever true that "He 
who loveth the danger shall perish therein." 

III. But though Peter fell, and fell basely, he repented quickly 
and sincerely. Grace found a ready entrance into his heart. There 
is thus a consoling side to the picture presented to-day. The look 
the Master cast upon him, so sad, so reproachful, was not lost on 
Peter. What shame it aroused, what recollections it brought to 
mind, what floods of repentant tears he shed, as he thought of his 
treachery to a Master, so kind, so true and so tender ! The heinous- 
ness of his crime, for he sinned against the light, broke in upon his 
soul in all its hideous reality. The veil that darkened his vision 
was torn aside, and he judged himself, as he was, "a sinful man." 
His repentance was no passing sentiment, but a deep and lasting 
awakening of conscience to the hatefulness of sin, and lifelong 
sorrow for incurring it. As I said, his cheeks were furrowed dur- 
ing life with the tears shed in atonement for it. 

God, we know, took away his sin. He was pardoned and re- 
stored to grace. The illustrious penitent, type of true compunction 
for all time, became his Lord's first vicar, the keystone of the world- 
encompassing arch, the foundation stone on which alone united 
Christendom can rest. The promise made to Peter still lives ; and out 
of his boat, the Roman Church, the new ark of Noe, Christ still 
teaches "the multitude on the shore." 

The shameful crucifixion was over, and the glorious resurrection 
had become a fact in history. Peter had again resumed his humble 
occupation of fishing. On one occasion he and his companions "had 
spent all the night and caught nothing." A stranger appeared who 
told them to cast the net on the right side of the ship, and forthwith 
"it was filled to breaking." Over a fire of coals an humble meal is 
prepared, and they all recognize in the stranger their risen Lord. 
It was then that, standing near a fire such as had flickered in the 
court of the denial, that Our Lord in His risen majesty evoked the 
triple confession of faith and love, that blotted out the triple denial 
of the Passion, "Simon son of Jonas, lovest thou me?" And Peter, 
no longer boastful and self-confident, appeals humbly to Our Lord's 
intimate knowledge of his heart, "Thou knowest, O Lord, that I 
love thee." Thrice was the question put and answered; and his- 



3 o PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 

iory tells how faithful Peter, personally and in his successors, has 
been to the injunction of his Master. 

Two monuments attest in Rome to-day how Peter witnessed to 
his Lord, even to the shedding of blood. Both deeply impress the 
visitor, but very differently. One is an humble wayside chapel, stand- 
ing lone, solitary and abandoned, like Christ in His Passion, and 
marking the spot where St. Peter, flying from Rome, at the request 
of the faithful in Nero's time, met Our Lord bearing His Cross. 
The chapel is named "Domine quo vadis," from St. Peter's words on 
the occasion, "Lord, whither goest thou?" "To Rome, to be cruci- 
fied," was the reply. Taking the words to heart, the Apostle hurried 
back to shed his blood for Christ. The other monument is the 
noble and lordly pile of St. Peter's Church, on the Vatican Mount, 
where Peter's crucifixion took place, and wherein the penitent 
Apostle undid by his great affirmation at Rome his base denial at 
Jerusalem. 

Surely the "finger of God is here, and it is wonderful in our eyes." 
The risen Christ has made the risen Apostle the foundation stone 
of His kingdom. Rome, that hammered the nations into unity, by 
law and force, paved the way for the new Rome, that binds all 
nations into unity by faith and love. Peter chose it as the center of 
"the kingdom," and "being confirmed, now confirmeth his brethren," 
and ever will, till "Christ's own" are gathered in and Rome is re- 
placed by the "Jerusalem that is above." 

Conclusion. — Two things strike us in this phase of the sacred 
Passion — the mercy and grace of Our Lord Jesus Christ, and next, 
the speedy and earnest repentance of Peter. Well might David, 
himself a penitent, cry out, "The mercies of God I shall sing for- 
ever." "His mercy is above all his works." This mercy tracked 
Peter down in his sin till he "returned to his father's house." On 
Peter's part there was little or no delay. There was no tampering 
with grace. Ere the morning sun rose in the sky he was back again 
into favor with God. There was no halting between God and Baal. 
His earnestness was shown by his life-long compunction and perse- 
verance. 

We have dwelt long and minutely on the fall and repentance of 
Peter, but let us turn our eyes to our own souls. Let us ask our- 
selves two questions: Have we ever, like Peter, basely denied 
Christ, and, if so, have we followed him in his repentance? Re- 
member, we have clearer light and quite as much grace, if not far 



THE DENIAL OF PETER 



more, than the Apostles ere the descent of the Holy Ghost. The 
greater the light the greater the responsibility. The higher the 
sun in the sky the less the excuse for falling over precipices. 

Let us ask ourselves if there is not a great deal of cant in our 
condemnation of Peter. Have we never denied or done something 
tantamount to it? Have we never been ashamed of Jesus, and of 
His cause? Have we not listened to or taken part with those who 
jeered, and scoffed, and ridiculed Him in His Church and her min- 
isters? When He is daily bound, and tried, and judged by His 
enemies, the world and the flesh, whose side do we take? Even 
when not going so far as to join the Pharisees and Sadducees of 
the day, when still calling ourselves by His name and professing 
His doctrine, do we not follow Him "afar off" ? While Jesus stands 
cold, lonely, hungry and naked in our poorer brethren, do we not 
sit "warming ourselves," thus practising the gospel of ease and self- 
indulgence, while professing "to take up our cross daily and fol- 
low him." 

Again, while falling like Peter, have we risen with him? Do we 
never hear the cock crow to awaken us from the sleep-like death of 
sin? Are we not deaf, wilfully deaf, to the call of conscience and 
the warning looks of Christ? He is ever near us in the Church. 
Do we respond to His calls and looks ? 

If we have fallen with Peter — and who has not? — let us weep, 
repent, change with him, and not by persistence in sin "crucify 
again and again the Lord of Glory," 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



IV. CHRIST BEFORE HEROD 



"And Herod with his army set him at nought: and mocked him." — 
Luke xxiii, n. 

SYNOPSIS. — Introduction. — Five times did Christ stand in the guise of a 
guilty criminal before His creatures. His appearance before Herod our 
theme to-day. Pilate, anxious to transfer responsibility of condemning 
an innocent man to another, sent Our Lord for trial to Herod, tetrarch, 
under Rome, of the province from which Our Lord came, then in Je- 
rusalem to keep the Passover. 

I. Story of the Herods. Closely connected with Our Lord's life and 
works. A family of successful adventurers. The Herod of the Passion, 
called Antipas, son of Herod the Great; called the fox by Our Lord. His 
sins of adultery and incest denounced by John the Baptist, foully mur- 
dered by him at the instigation of the wicked woman with whom he 
lived. To him was Christ brought for trial. Anxious to see and con- 
verse with Our Lord. Christ 'silent. Awful judgment of Herod im- 
plied herein. 

II. Why? No worthy motive behind Herod's curiosity. Herod 
type of impure worldlings. God speaks not to such. Silence of God in 
a soul worst form of punishment. The Herods of the day. 

HI. Herod's last and greatest sin, mockery of Christ. The depth 
of mental torture to Christ, Eternal Wisdom, in being treated as a fool. 
The mystery it contains. The folly of the Cross. The opposition of the 
world to the wisdom of Christ. Reason in the higher realms of thought 
needs light of faith. Herod's sad end. The two lessons taught by his life. 

When Our Lord looked with eyes of tenderness and pity on 
Simon Peter, it was nearly dawn, on the first Good Friday. He 
had still to stand His trial before Caiphas, and the full court of 
the Sanhedrim, that could not meet to hear cases till daytime. 
The mockery of this trial is soon over, and Christ, laden with 
chains, is dragged before the Roman governor, Pilate, to have 
sentence of death pronounced, as to him the infliction of this pen- 
alty was reserved. A hollow charge of blasphemy and sedition, got 
up against Him by illegal questioning and false accusations, had 
been framed by the Sanhedrim; and they now seek the sanction 
of the Roman authorities to put Christ to death. Pilate, the gov- 
ernor, had come to Jerusalem from Cesarea, with an additional 
cohort of soldiers, the better to overawe the turbulent Jews, during 
the Passover feast. 

Herod, too, tetrarch or kinglet, under Rome, ruling over Galilee 
and Perea, was in Jerusalem at the time, partly to comply with the 
Paschal precept, inasmuch as in religion he was a Jew ; but mainly, 



CHRIST BEFORE HEROD 



perhaps, to take a share in the amusements and license then preva- 
lent in the city. His share in Our Lord's Passion, as well as Our 
Lord's bearing toward him, form the theme of our discourse to-day. 

I. A footsore and weary prisoner, worn out with the ill-treat- 
ment of the night — already almost reduced to the level of "a worm 
and no man," to use the prophet's graphic description, He isled away 
again from the house of Pilate, where His trial began, to the house 
of Herod. Our Lord was a Galilean, as were most of His fol- 
lowers, and this circumstance gave Pilate an opportunity of cast- 
ing the responsibility of passing sentence on Him on Herod. It is 
with this Herod, a puppet of Rome and one of the chief actors in 
Our Lord's passion, that we have now to deal. 

No small measure of Our Lord's sufferings sprang from. His 
being brought into close contact with the wretched creatures who 
compassed His death. For a refined, cultured, sensitive mind, 
association with the low, the ignorant, the coarse, and the sordid 
is martyrdom. To the holy and God-fearing, sin and the godless 
are a source of acute pain. What then must Our Lord, infinite 
holiness, justice and truth, have felt when brought a victim into "the 
council of evildoers"? How revolting and loathsome to Him was 
the foul touch, and breath, and speech, and conduct of the rabble 
of Jews and their leaders, to say nothing of the Gentile soldiers. 

Pilate, to whom He was first led, saw through the flimsy veil of 
accusation woven against Him in the council chamber of the high 
priest; but he had not the courage of his opinions. He was glad 
of the excuse, therefore, to send Him for trial to Herod, on hearing 
that He was a Galilean, and as such, under Herod's jurisdiction. 
It was thus that Herod became an actor in the Passion. Indeed, 
there is an intimate connection between him and Our Lord's mis- 
sion and life. The Scripture says that Herod, seeing Jesus, was 
very glad, for "he had heard many things concerning him," "Herod, 
the tetrarch, heard of all things that were done by him" (Luke ix). 
The great prophet and teacher of the land over which he ruled 
could not have escaped his notice. There were disciples of Our 
Lord in his own household — amongst others, Joanna the wife of his 
steward, Chausai. Some time after the murder of John the Baptist, 
moved by superstitious fear, and a bad conscience, Herod said 
of Our Lord, "This is John the Baptist; he is risen from the dead" 
(Matt. xiv). "And he sought to see him" (Luke x). His wish is 
now unexpectedly gratified. Not that he wished to satisfy his 



34 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



curiosity through any praiseworthy or unselfish motive. It was 
not to free an innocent victim of perverted justice nor to learn the 
ways of the Lord from his accredited teacher; but to amuse him- 
self with a display of strange, magical power ; or even a wonderful 
cure — that perhaps of his now crippled step-daughter, Salome, the 
dancing girl, whose request had caused him to order the beheading 
of John the Baptist. Herod has gained the odious double distinc- 
tion of having mocked Christ, and of having murdered His pre- 
cursor. 

He came of a bad stock — an Idumean family that had adopted 

the religion of the Jews and the politics of Rome, a type of the true 
Eastern adventurer, able, cruel, crafty and licentious ; utterly 
devoid of conscience where their temporal interests were at stake. 
As very often happens, they were successful and prosperous; and 
yet at heart miserable and unhappy, an object lesson in illustration 
of the truth that even in this world wealth, place and power are 
not everything, and that they often hinder, rather than promote, 
true joy, peace and content. 

The Herod of the Passion, known as Herod Antipas, was the 
son of Herod the Great, founder of the family, who had married 
Mariamne, the last of the Machabeans, whom he afterward foully 
murdered. He was an imperialist — a partisan of the Romans, and 
formed in the state a political party called Herodians, aiming at 
eventual kingship. He beautified and enlarged both Temple and 
city, in Roman fashion. Herod Antipas was, like his father, cruel, 
crafty and licentious; but without his father's ability and force of 
character. He was called fox by Our Lord. He intrigued with a 
woman of loose life, his brother's wife, and to marry her he illegally 
divorced his own lawful spouse. His new partner in guilt led him 
into the most revolting crimes. Their openly scandalous union was 
publicly denounced by the Baptist, Christ's precursor. "It is not 
lawful for thee to have thy brother's wife." Herod dared not 
publicly slay the last of the prophets, and instead cast him into 
prison. But one act of injustice leads to another. To fulfil a wicked 
oath, made to a vicious maiden, urged thereto by her mother, his 
partner in guilt, Herod orders the Baptist to be beheaded. 

In spite of his gross cruelty and lust, Herod had a sort of venera- 
tion, or rather fascination, for religious rites and ceremonies, and 
never failed to make a show of attendance at them. Like all good 
instincts gone wrong, the husk and chaff remained when the grain 



CHRIST BEFORE HEROD 



35 



and kernel of religion had gone. He was the type of many a royal 
and imperial persecutor in ancient and modern times. If true re- 
ligion does not suit them, they frame one to "their own image and 
likeness." Flattering tools are ever at hand to help the great and 
powerful in this sort of unholy work. But neither Christ nor the 
Baptist feared or flattered Herod. Hence their treatment by him, 
and his own undoing. Well for him had he taken to heart the 
Psalmist's words : "The just man shall correct me in mercy, and 
shall reprove me, but let not the oil of the sinner fatten my head" 
(Ps. cxl, 5). His courtiers persuaded him that the keeping of the 
Passover made him religious. He clung to the ritual and cere- 
monies of religion, whilst casting the moral law to the winds. He 
was punctual to the letter, whilst thwarting the spirit, of the law. 
Like the other enemies of Christ, who were now plotting His 
judicial murder, Herod "gave tithe of mint and cummin," to the 
utter neglect of the weightier matters of the law, justice, mercy, 
purity and truth. 

And now the opportunity that Herod long craved for came 
round. Christ is actually sent to him for trial. This gracious act 
on the part of the Roman governor gratifies his pride, and heals 
a mutual feud of long standing. His curiosity to see and hear 
Christ is great. We have every reason to think that Herod was 
kind and complimentary, flattering even, in his reception of Christ. 
"He questioned him in many words ; but he answered him nothing." 
This silence of Christ before Herod, like the dread silence of God 
in souls lost to a sense of sin, was more eloquent than words. He 
answered Pilate, He had something to say even to the hypocritical 
high priest; but for Herod, not a single word, though he spoke 
fairly, nay unctuously. And why? Because Herod's heart was 
hardened, and his mind clouded by the most God-expelling of all 
vices — lust. It was his predominant passion. His murders and 
cruelty were but its consequences. When long indulged in, more 
than any other sin, it "divides between God and the soul." To 
draw near to God in prayer, to offer incense, to join in church 
services, when the soul is wallowing in sin — particularly sins of the 
flesh that a man will not give up — is adding hypocrisy to guilt. 
"When you multiply prayers I will not hear, for your hands are 
full of blood" (Isaias i, 15). Repentance for wilful sin, deep, 
true, and sincere, is the first essential condition for admittance into 
favor in God's sight. "Wash yourselves, be clean, cease to do per- 



36 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 

versely, and then come and accuse me." "If your sins be red as 
scarlet they shall be made whiter than snow" (Id. v, 18). 

Now this is just what Herod would not do. He clung to the 
fiendish woman who had marred his life and her own. At her re- 
quest he had slain the innocent Baptist, next to Christ Himself 
amongst men in holiness of life; and the blood of this "just Abel" 
was crying to heaven for vengeance. In vain does the impenitent 
sinner speak honeyed words to the Son of God. How terrible is 
the silence of God to a soul irrevocably "inclined to evil." "Chas- 
tise me not in thy wrath, O Lord : be not thou silent! 3 Woe to the 
sinner who feels not the grace of repentance stirring in his heart, 
whose conscience hears not the warning voice of God. The last 
rattle even in the throat of the dying is an indication of life; but 
unbroken silence is the seal and symbol of death. Herod would 
not take God's grace when offered; and God will not change His 
laws to suit Herod's whims. He is still and calm as the silent 
grave. 

II. As I said, no worthy motive was behind Herod's desire to 
see and hear Christ. Our Lord invites all, even the "worst sinners 
to repentance." "He even stands at the door of their heart and 
knocks," and gladly welcomes "all who seek him in truth" ; but 
herein Herod failed. He wished to see and hear wonders from 
Christ, as rustics go to mock and gape at jugglers in a fair. 
There was no desire to approach Christ "in spirit and truth" by 
ceasing "to do evil and learning to do well." Hence, no miracle is 
wrought, no word either of comfort, exhortation, or reproof is 
uttered. Dead silence marks Christ's dealings with Herod. 

Herod was the type of the worldling of his day. Herods abound 
and ever have abounded — men weak, absurdly vain, sensual, fri- 
volous, and yet often wonder loving and clinging to the rags of 
religion under the form of some favorite superstition or other. 
In views, they may be advanced Modernists, who, like Herod, see 
Him only to mock the reality of His person and mission; but 
their advanced religion is but a deadly superstition withal. 

To humble souls, who seek God in sincerity and truth, Jesus 
ever speaks. Such as these He is ever ready to heal, enlighten and 
console; but the proud He sends "empty away." As in the days 
of His earthly pilgrimage, to the gaping crowd, who observe Him 
only to carp and criticize, who ask questions merely to entrap or 
"ensnare him in speech," who seek for signs and wonders, only to 



CHRIST BEFORE HEROD 



37 



gratify curiosity, no sign is shown — to them Jesus is silent. The 
blind see, the deaf hear, the dead in sin rise again, the poor have 
the gospel preached to them ; but the Herods of the day He passes 
by. They see only a Galilean peasant — a Jewish rabbi, the son of 
Joseph and Mary; but the Son of God they see not. 

In all souls, in or out of the body of the Church, wherein there 
is a festering habit of sin which they do not seriously mean to re- 
nounce, Jesus is silent. His words would be wasted on them. 
They would take no effect. Such as are in this frame of mind 
are hopelessly godless, and to the utterly godless, Christ is ever 
silent. The Baptist's furrow has not been traced in their souls. He 
sent His herald to prepare His way. John's sole and whole mes- 
sage was, "Repent, for the kingdom of God is at hand." The 
method is still the same. The heart must be plowed by grief for 
sin ere the seed of God's grace can germinate. Herod slew the 
Baptist. The modern Herod — the world, the embodiment of Herod 
— would slay God's heralds also, the voice of conscience and the 
voice of the Church, if they durst, and could. God's revenge is 
silence. His worst punishment on this side the grave is: "You 
will call upon me and I will not hear; and you will die in your 
sins." 

III. And now came Herod's greatest sin ; his mockery of Jesus. 
He mocked his God. He clad Eternal Wisdom, incarnate in Christ, 
in the robe of a fool. It was his chief share in the Passion, and 
gives him a principal place amongst the actors in the drama of the 
Cross. Though he did not imbue his hands directly in Christ's 
blood, as in the slaying of the Baptist, nor was he aware of Christ's 
divinity, yet was he guilty of the death of the Lord indirectly and 
negatively by not liberating Him when it was his duty and in his 
power to do so. Herod and his jeering myrmidons clad their silent 
prisoner in a white robe of scorn, to show their contempt of Him 
as a witless fool — a man bereft of common sense and intelligence. 
The tetrarch, irritated at Our Lord's persistent silence, puts on 
Him the distinguishing mark of those who in losing their reason 
lose their humanity. 

Now if there is any one form of trial more than another that 
men necessarily conscious of their superiority to others wince 
under, and shrink from, it is ridicule, the being deemed stupid and 
ignorant. They will endure any physical torment rather than be, 
as Christ was in the most humiliating degree, "the scorn of men 



38 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



and the outcast of the people." Picture to yourselves Eternal Wis- 
dom, who planned the world — of whose infinite intelligence the 
combined wisdom of men and angels is but a faint and distant 
shadow — and even putting aside the truth of His Divinity, think of 
Him who composed the Our Father, who uttered the maxims 
stored in the Sermon on the Mount, and the discourse of the Last 
Supper — think of Him treated as a fool — turned out into the streets 
in the garb of an idiot. The highest created intelligences stood in 
mute adoration before Him as the giver of their powers ; the holiest 
and wisest of our race are ever finding new treasures of wisdom 
in the few sayings and maxims He left behind Him in the Gospel, 
and yet He is presented by Herod as a laughing-stock to a coarse, 
besotted rabble. The very sick He healed, the deaf whose ears He 
unstopped, the blind to whom His word restored the light of day, 
the cripples who "rose up and walked" at His command; nay, His 
own chosen Apostles, are hiding out of sight, ashamed to be seen 
near Him. The very children He loved are encouraged to cast 
stones and ordure at the poor fool of Galilee, as He wearily tramped 
along the rough, hard streets, back again to Pilate. 

There is a deep mystery in this imputing folly, madness, to the 
Son of God. We shudder at the bodily torments of the Passion, 
and the thought of the scourge, the thorns, the cross and the cruel 
nails; and it seems incredible God could have "so loved the world 
as to give his own beloved son over to them"; but the shame, the 
degradation to which the "Light of lights," Eternal W 7 isdom, the 
world's true light, of which both faith and reason combined are 
but rays, was subjected to are worse. 

As I said, Herod is the embodiment of the spirit of the world, 
and the flesh kindred, nay, almost twin spirits. His deeming Our 
Lord mad and mocking Him as such shows the gulf that existed 
between the spirit of Christ and that of Herod. "The carnal man," 
i. e., the world and the flesh, "understandeth not the things that 
are of God." The wisdom of the Cross is folly to the Gentiles ; that 
God, clad in human form, should become an object of laughter and 
scorn to His creatures shows how far the world had drifted from 
the divine standard. 

But is the world, in spirit, much better to-day? Outwardly, 
no doubt, it is better. Christ has overcome it, and His Cross has 
toned, elevated and renewed all things; but inwardly, and in spirit, 
it is as hostile to Him and as bad as ever. Worldlings would go as 



CHRIST BEFORE HEROD 



39 



far as Herod, if they dared. The world, their master, is in heart as 
lecherous, as incredulous, as selfish as ever. Men are what they 
are in God's sight, i. e., what they think and will; and we all know 
what the minds and hearts of the votaries of the world and the 
flesh are like. To "men of the world" Christ is certainly not "the 
way, the truth and the light." The wisdom of the Cross ever is 
and ever will be foolishness to the Greek, i. e., to the worldly wise. 
"They mocked him, clothing him with a white garment," expresses 
the attitude of the world to Christ in His Church to-day. Scorn 
and derision greet the invitation of Our Lord's vicar to a world 
"wise in its own conceits," when inviting it to return to the ways 
of righteousness and truth. Even in the realms of reason and 
higher thought the world is ever "digging pits that hold not water," 
extinguishing reality and common sense; yet hisses out invectives 
against those to whom the light of faith points a better way, and 
who would fain be "a light to their feet and a guide to their 
paths." 

But to return to Our Lord and His persecutors. He passes in 
His robe of scorn from the palace of Herod back again to Pilate. 
Herod has now rejected forever "the day of his visitation." The 
silence of Jesus both to ear and heart remains unbroken. No rec- 
ord tells of Herod's ever repenting of his crimes. In exile and 
infamy his sinful career was brought to an end. 

Urged by his partner, Herodias, he went with her to Rome to 
sue from the emperor the full title of king; but the report of his 
misdeeds had gone before him, and fortune, the only divinity he 
really worshiped, mocked him who had dared to mock God. De- 
prived of his office, even of tetrarch, he was banished to Gaul, 
where he ended his days in misery. The world is but a poor pay- 
master at best, and even in this life deludes rather than rewards its 
votaries. It tempts us into piling up heavy debts, and leaves us 
morally and spiritually bankrupt. 

Two lessons are suggested by the phase of the Passion treated 
of to-day. The first is summed up in St. Paul's words, "I beseech 
you, brethren, not to receive the grace of God in vain," and is illus- 
trated in Herod's life. Stifle it not as he did by a life of worldli- 
ness, sensuality and irreligion. God sent him, as He sends us all, 
sufficient, if not abundant, grace. He had his lights and calls ; and 
both could and ought to have lived up to them. God spoke to him 
in conscience, He spoke to him through John the Baptist, and the 



4o 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



preaching of Our Lord. But Herod went his own way. Like Pha- 
rao, he hardened his heart. The voice of God was drowned by 
the voice of the world and the flesh, till it ceased and was heard 
no more. 

The next lesson, and a consequence of the preceding, is con- 
tained in those other words of St. Paul, "God forbid I should glory 
save in the cross of Our Lord Jesus Christ." It is no desire to 
see us suffer, that Our Lord tells us to renounce a life of pleasure 
and take up our cross. It is His inherent love of us and interest 
in our welfare that urges Him to make us tread the path He chose 
Himself. Herod's life of pleasure ended in disappointment and 
misery. Christ's Passion was brief and led to the glories of the 
Resurrection and joy without end. So with us. The sufferings of 
this life are not to be compared with the joys that await those 
who take up their cross daily and follow Our Lord, and who under 
its weight both feel and say with their Leader, "Not my will but 
thine be done." 



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE 



V. CHRIST BEFORE PILATE 



"But they were instant, with loud voices requiring that he might be cruci- 
fied. And Pilate gave sentence that it should be as they required."— Luke 
xxiii, 23, 24. 



SYNOPSIS. — Introduction. — Of the actors in the tragedy of the Crucifixion 
the names of Judas and Pilate best known. Why? Pilate guilty of 
judicial murder of Christ, whom he could and ought to have saved. 
The scourging and crowning with thorns due to his direct action. 

I. Our Lord's return from Herod. Pilate convinced of Christ' > in- 
nocence and declares it. His dealings with the Jews. Deservedly un- 
popular and hated. His character. Weakness in all that involved sacri- 
fice of self. "An enemy of the Cross." His last chance. "Weighed in 
the balance and found wanting." 

II. Pilate orders Our Lord to be scourged. One of the most terrible 
and humiliating torments of the Passion. Savagely and recklessly carried 
out. No limit to number of stripes in Roman law, though there was in 
Jewish. Free hand given herein to Roman soldiers. 

III. The crowning with thorns. The pain involved. What it typi- 
fied. Pilate's guilty weakness. What it brought him to. He feared 
Caesar more than God. Looked only at this life. Never thought of an- 
other. Life of Christ reproduced in Church. 

Conclusion. — Exhort to be spiritually strong and to fear only God; 
and the reproach of one's own conscience. 

Amongst those who took a direct part in Our Lord's Passion, 
two names stand out prominently in the Gospel — Judas Iscariot 
and Pontius Pilate. The former betrayed, the latter condemned 
to death, the Lord of glory. Christ Himself prophesied this 
double event. "One of you," alluding to Judas, "will betray me," 
and, referring to Pilate and the Romans, "The Son of Man 
shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and 
scourged and spat upon" (Luke xviii). Then, Jew and Gentile, 
East and West, took part in the great crimes enacted on the first 
Good Friday in Jerusalem. 

Though Pilate would fain have washed his hands of the blood 
of that "just man," yet, by common consent, his conscience was 
weighted with the guilt of condemning One whom he knew and 
declared to be innocent. Water may cleanse the body, but repen- 
tance and reparation of the wrong done can alone remove stains 
from the soul. As long as the creed lives on human lips, so 
long will the name of Pontius Pilate be held in execration; for 
therein it is recorded that through his judicial sanction the Pas- 



42 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 

sion took place. "Suffered under Pontius Pilate." A display 
of the firmness from which no judge, and especially a judge like 
Pilate, with an armed force at his back, is justified in shrinking, 
would have quelled the frenzied mob that shrieked for the blood 
of "the lamb of God." But Pilate vacillated, dallied with a self- 
evident duty, claiming fulfilment, and fell. Justice prevaricated, 
and mob rule carried the day. Over and beyond the gross miscar- 
riage of justice, two of the sorrowful mysteries of the Passion, 
the scourging and crowning with thorns, were due to his direct ac- 
tion. In this degenerate Roman judge, weakness and cruelty re- 
placed the national justice and strength of his race. 

I. We left Our Lord in the garb of a fool, weary and foot- 
sore, wending his way back again, from the house of Herod, 
to the hall of Pilate, for His final trial, the fifth He was to 
undergo before men. A few days before, Pilate and his court 
must have been startled by the shouts of, "Hosanna to the Son of 
David," greeting the entry into the city of a meek and lowly 
stranger, who had ridden over the slopes of Olivet. The object 
of that ovation is now dragged before him, a second time, for 
judgment. He had previously, as a trained judge, read inno- 
cence in the very gait and countenance of Christ ; and to rid him- 
self of responsibility, had sent him to Herod. The prisoner now 
returns, still uncondemned. To the bold effrontery of his ac- 
cusers, who would fain bluff Pilate into a hasty sentence, the 
judge replies, "Behold, I having examined him before you, find 
no cause in this man in those things wherein you accuse him. 
No, nor Herod, either. For I sent you to him, and behold nothing 
worthy of death is done to him" (Luke xxiii, 15). "Take ye him 
and judge him according to your law," he had said, to throw 
the guilt of condemnation on others; but, retort the enemies of 
Jesus, "It is not lawful for us to put any man to death." Christ's 
trial now begins in grim earnest; and we may add, Pilate's, too. 
Will he be strong enough, and just enough to decide fairly, and 
act up to his conscience throughout? From the very beginning, 
he seems to have had an irresistible conviction of the prisoner's 
innocence, and a desire to save him, which all the cunning devices 
and sophistry of the Jews failed to shake. He knew the temper 
of the Jews and their leaders well. There was no love lost be- 
tween them. He feared that their evil reports about him might 
reach his imperial master in Rome. They abhorred him in turn ; 



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE 



43 



and it must be owned that his rule, as Procurator, had been 
harsh and untactful. To Jewish fanaticism and deep religious 
scrupulosity he ever opposed Roman insolence and impiety. They 
deeply resented his bringing his army from Cesarea to Jerusalem 
and thus flaunting the standards of pagan Rome, introducing at 
the same time pagan rites and emblems into the holy city. He, 
on his part, indifferent to religion, in any shape or form, could 
not understand their bigotry; and solely on compulsion did he 
remove the hated standards. A cohort only was quartered on 
certain festivals, in order to overawe the mob. Pilate had, more- 
over, given deep offense, by applying the money of the Temple 
treasury — the sacred corban — to the profane purpose of construct- 
ing an aqueduct. This caused tumult and uproar, resulting in 
massacre. We learn from the Scriptures that on one occasion he 
slew some Galileans worshiping in the Temple, mingling their 
blood with that of the sacrifices. He loathed the tenacity with 
which the Jews clung to their religion and nationality; he enter- 
tained, in short, all the hatred and contempt which oppressors 
ever have for the victims of their oppression. His insolent dis- 
play of Roman superiority roused the Jews to frenzy, themselves 
proud in their turn of their ancient lineage; and looking forward 
to worldwide dominion under a triumphant Messias — a sort of 
Jewish Mahomet, whose kingdom should be of this world, whatso- 
ever its relation to the next. For a Messias, "meek and humble 
of heart/' they had neither respect nor love. With such accusers, 
and before such a judge, the gentle Saviour was brought for trial. 
Pilate, as he sat on the judgment seat, raised on the marble 
pavement, called in Hebrew "Gabbatha," was angry at his recall 
to business, and anxious to get rid of trouble. Though he could 
be, and was, stern and cruel at times, yet was he, at bottom, 
weak and irresolute — deadly failings in a ruler of men. He was 
selfish, and consequently untrue and unfaithful. He thought only 
of his own personal aggrandizement, heedless of the means that 
led to it. The shifting motives of the hour, rather than fixed 
principles, guided his conduct and decisions. Nor was he without 
an element of good. Though in the long run "Their voices pre- 
vailed," and he "did as they required," and "Jesus he delivered up 
to their will" (Luke xxiii, 23-24) ; still, his desire was ever to 
"release Jesus." Three distinct times did he declare Christ's 
innocence of the charges of conspiracy, sedition and treason, 



44 PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 

brought against him; but he would make no personal sacrifice in 
support of what he saw to be right. Release ought to have fol- 
lowed his declaration of Christ's freedom from guilt; but he 
faltered and failed. "He followed not justice, but iniquity"; and 
he "gave sentence that it should be as they required" (Luke 
xxiii, 24). 

Pilate had often sat in the seat of judgment, and in many 
cases, doubtless, had decided lightly, hastily, cruelly, but never 
so unjustly as now. Never had he felt the sting of conscience 
so sharp, the innocence of the prisoner so manifest. It was in 
vain he went through the theatrical farce of washing his hands. 
Moral guilt is not removed by water. It is dangerous to tamper 
with the convictions of conscience. Duty, when plain, demands 
instant compliance. The right thing must be done, cost what 
it may. But Pilate, like so many others before and since his day, 
was a moral coward. He dared not do what he knew and felt 
to be right. His hand-washing did but add hypocrisy to guilt. 
The blood of the innocent ever calls aloud for vengeance. 

Meanwhile, what of Jesus? He, the Saviour of the world, 
stands before His own creatures, as the sheep before its shearers, 
and butchers. He saw the struggle going on in Pilate's heart: 
for Pilate, too, as I observed, was on his trial before Jesus. It 
was his last grace, perchance. Divine light and help to know and 
do the right thing were not wanting. His own vacillating will 
was at fault. A warning message from his wife im- 
plored him to "have nothing to do with this just man"; but he 
still hesitates and temporizes. The cry, "If thou releasest this 
man, thou art not Caesar's friend," rang in his ears. It was self- 
interest against the claims of duty — Caesar against God. He still 
clings, however, to the hope of saving Jesus by compromise. It 
was the custom to release a criminal at the Paschal feast, and 
thinking they would prefer the prophet before whom they had 
strewn palm branches a few days before, tries to persuade them 
to free Jesus, and crucify Barabbas, the notorious thief and high- 
wayman. Grace was no doubt working in Pilate's heart; for 
where Christ is, "Virtue goeth forth from him." Pilate is 
plainly overawed by this wonderful Jewish prophet. His wife's 
dream, ancient beliefs, containing scattered rays of primitive light 
as to the gods appearing in certain favored places, and persons, 
were telling on him. He questioned Jesus, half in curiosity, half 



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE 



45 



in superstitious fear, as to his origin and mission; but the fear 
of Caesar proved stronger in his case than the fear of God. Christ, 
too, was silent. He saw that Pilate was neither earnest nor 
sincere in following truth and justice. He gauged and measured 
Pilate's sin, as compared with that of Judas: "He that betrayed 
me to thee, hath the greater sin"; but sin it was — and grave, 
a sin against light, a gross breach of his duty, as judge and 
governor. His fate is a warning to those who are content to 
will what is right; but make no effort to do it. He wished to 
release Jesus; but no more. He proposes to free Him, instead 
of Barabbas; but, with all the might and majesty of the Roman 
Empire at his back, takes no effectual means to carry out his good 
resolution. "He released unto them him, who, for murder and 
sedition had been cast into prison; but Jesus he delivered up to 
their will" (Luke xxiii, 25). It seems blasphemy to put the 
names of Jesus and Barabbas side by side — crime with holiness — 
a thief, a rebel and an assassin, with One against whom even 
His bitterest enemies could not find a word to say. The hoarse 
cry of "Away with him, crucify him," "Not this man but Barab- 
bas," that broke loose from the throats of the mob, stuns and 
appalls us, as it did Pilate. It is almost a consolation to learn that 
"They knew not what they did," in the sense that we know now. 
And yet does not a similar cry rise from every Christian heart, 
that prefers vice to virtue, the will of the world and of the 
flesh, to that of the great and good God. Do we not all, at times, 
call out loudly, "Not this man, but Barabbas"? 

II. But let us put aside for the moment our own share in 
the Passion of Christ to fix our attention on that of Pilate. In- 
stead of turning his cohort loose on the rabble, unjustly clamor- 
ing for blood, as he had done before when it suited his pur- 
pose, he basely yields to the storm of popular clamor. He frees 
a seditious robber; and hands Jesus over to his brutal soldiery, 
to be scourged. "Then therefore Pilate took Jesus and scourged 
him." The Paschal lamb of the dying Passover was not flayed 
till dead; but Jesus Christ, by Pilate's orders, the true Paschal 
lamb of the new alliance, was flayed whilst alive. "We have 
thought him as it were a leper, and one stricken by God? 

By Jewish law, the stripes in scourging could not exceed forty, 
"Lest thy brother depart shamefully torn before thy eyes" (Deut. 
xxv ) ; but the Roman law recognized no limit. The scourgers, 



4 6 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



bribed by the Jews, wishing their victim to die under the lash, 
strove as to which amongst them could lay most stripes on Our 
Lord's already worn out and tortured body. On that body, fast- 
ened to a pillar, the horrible "flagellum," made up of several 
leathern thongs, with hooks of bone attached, rained on his 
quivering nerves. The scourging is one of the most terrible 
scenes of the Passion. The prophetic allusions to it in the Old 
Testament, and the revelations made to saints in subsequent 
times, make reflection on it painful. Hundreds of strokes fell 
upon Him as the cruel scourgers, prompted by the evil one, 
relieved each other. "The wicked have wrought upon my back," 
or, as St. Jerome translates it, have plowed a furrow on my 
back (Ps. cxxviii, 3). The cruel lash reaches every part of His 
sacred body. In the whole of His Sacred Passion, He is "Wound- 
ed for our iniquities;" but in the scourging, He suffers specially 
for sins of the flesh — the most blinding, the most opposed to the 
purity and holiness of God; and alas! the most numerous and 
widespread of all sins. "According to the measure of the sin 
shall the measure of the stripes be" (Deut. xxv, 2). "The whole 
head is sick, the whole heart is sad." "From the sole of the foot 
unto the top of the head there is no soundness in him, wounds 
and bruises and swelling sores. They are not dressed nor bound 
up nor fomented with oil" (Isaias i, 6). The thorn crown pierces 
His head; and the cruel lash reaches every other part of His 
body. The prophet who glows in describing Him as "beautiful 
amongst the sons of men," elsewhere in sorrow, says of Him, 
"There is no beauty in him, nor comeliness, and his look was, 
as it were, hidden and despised. We have thought him as it were 
a leper, and as one struck by God and afflicted" (Isaias liii). 

III. It was thus that, "Pilate took Jesus and scourged him." 
It is not Pilate's own judgment. "What evil hath this man done? 
I find no cause of death in him"; and then adds the unjust 
judge, "I will chastise him, therefore, and let him go." But 
Pilate's share in the Passion is not limited to the scourging; his 
soldiery interpret his words more widely. Unused to a victim, 
"In whose mouth there was no complaint," they invent a new 
torture, never inflicted before, or since. He is dragged to the 
guardroom, where the whole cohort are gathered. The robe, that 
had been hastily flung over his bleeding back, is torn off and an 
old purple ragged soldier's cloak is thrown over his shoulders. 



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE 



47 



A wisp of thorns, gathered from a neighboring bush, is woven 
into a garland, and beaten down savagely on his brow, with the 
reed, placed in his hand, in mockery of his kingly claims. 

Adam's sin brought thorns into the world as a curse. In 
symbolism, sin is a thorn. Isaac, as victim, was saved by the ram 
entangled in a thicket of thorns. We, too, victims, doomed to 
punishment for our sins, escape through Him, the spotless lamb, 
whose Divine head was entangled in the thorny crown, woven 
by Pilate's soldiery. Victims of old were decked in roses; but 
the Victim of Sin was crowned with the thorns, that symbolize 
the sins for which He suffered. They were of Pilate's weaving. 
The law is bound to protect the remaining rights of its guilty 
victims; how much more those of the innocent victim of a mis- 
carriage of justice. 

Thus arrayed in a purple rag, and a thorny crown, the Lord 
of glory is exposed to the rude jests and cruel mockeries of a 
profligate soldiery. "Scandals must come" (in the course of 
things) "but wo to him, through whom they come." "Christ had 
to suffer" ; all was foretold ; but wo to those through whom 
these sufferings came about. To deck us with roses, He was 
crowned with thorns. To blunt the edge of every instrument 
of torture, He endured them all. It was not merely physical 
pain and torment He bore in silence, but what is harder, moral — 
he was the butt of jeers and scoffs, and insults innumerable. 
Prisoners are usually spared the mockery and gibes of their 
jailers; but Christ was clad as a buffoon for the sport of brutal 
Roman soldiers. Pilate has not thought of according Him the 
protection of the law. His minions kneel before their victim, 
saying, "Hail, King of the Jews." Little do they know the 
truth of their salutation. "Who is this that cometh from Edom, 
with dyed garments from Bosra, this beautiful one in his robe? 
. . . Why then is thy apparel red, and thy garments like 
theirs that tread in the winepress?" (Isaias lxiii, 2). Pilate's 
wicked weakness reduced Christ to the condition of "a worm 
and no man"; but the day will come when "this worm," this 
embodiment of justice, will "trample on his enemies and tread 
them in his wrath, and their blood be sprinkled on his garments" 
(Ibid. 3). 

Again, the Saviour, in ragged garb and with blood-stained coun- 
tenance, is brought before this unjust steward of the authority 



4 8 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



of God. Kings, conquerors and victims, used to be crowned; 
and so was Christ, the embodiment of all three, but in a crown 

of Pilate's weaving. The noble and patient bearing of the prisoner 
overawed his unjust judge. Pilate, whether in mockery or in pity, 
who can tell, making one last appeal for mercy and forbear- 
ance to the infuriated mob, cried out, as he presented Christ to 
the people, "Behold the man." Surely the spectacle of a prophet, 
once the darling of the nation, reduced to His now pitiable con- 
dition, will soften their hard hearts ; but as well appeal to the 
wild waves in a storm, or a pack of hungry wolves in sight of 
prey, as to the sea of upturned faces that surged round his 
judgment seat. A fierce swelling cry, of "Crucify him, crucify 
him," arose. The passions of the mob were thoroughly roused ; 
and Pilate stood powerless and irresolute. He had let go the 
helm of justice. He was a cork on the billows, a "reed shaken 
by the wind." Even in this extremity it was his duty to be 
just, to resist iniquity and injustice, even to the shedding of 
blood. But Pilate would be no martyr to righteousness. He 
never meant to suffer, in person, for any abstract principle of 
justice. Self-interest was his moving power. To be well with 
Csesar, to hold his office as long as it suited him, was his main 
object. The Jews know this and cry out, "If thou release this 
man, thou art not Caesar's friend." To be accused of official 
neglect and rapacity, to be called to account by his imperial 
master meant for him disgrace, poverty, possibly a cruel death. 
The commands of conscience are as imperious as those of Caesar. 
Pilate argued, hesitated and, in the spiritual realm, fell. He kept 
his place, and power, and ill-gotten wealth; but stained his soul in 
doing so. He lost peace of mind. He inflicted a wound on his 
own conscience that all the waters of the Jordan or the Tiber 
could neither heal nor cleanse. He condemned the Lord of glory ; 
and if ignorant of His person, he knew full well he was condemn- 
ing an innocent man. "Then therefore he delivered him to them 
to be crucified" (John xix, 6). These words seal the fate of 
Christ, and doom of Pilate. Christ's body is in the hands of the 
Jews; but the unjust judge is in the hands of God. One of the 
many lessons suggested by this phase of the Passion is not to 
fear Caesar, not to fear those "who can do no more than slay 
the body; but rather to fear God, who can cast both body and 



CHRIST BEFORE PILATE 



49 



soul into hell." If only Pilate, as far as his lights went, had taken 
this lesson to heart! 

It is said that in a happy union husband and wife fuse into 
the likeness of each other. How truly is the life of Christ repro- 
duced in that of His spouse, the Church. She, too, like her Lord, 
has her life of shadows, mingled with glimpses of glory, as His 
was. Her triumphal entry into one nation or city is often fol- 
lowed by shouts of, "Away with her," crucify her, from throats 
whence once proceeded hosannas of welcome. The same charges 
of blasphemy, treason and sedition are brought against her. 
She makes herself out to be Divine, "she deludes the people, 
perverts the nation, conspires against the state, forbids to pay 
tribute to Caesar, and those who take part with her can not be 
Caesar's friends" ; she claims kingly powers and prerogatives ; 
and her presence and influence are opposed to the best interests 
of the state. Annas and Caiphas and Sanhedrims are not want- 
ing to judge and condemn her. Pilates, too, there are, who 
whilst professing to "find no fault in her," owning to her 
power for good, yet hesitate not to scourge and crown her with 
thorns, rob her of her ensigns of royalty, and thus reduced, ex- 
pose her to the contempt and ridicule of the Gentiles. Her his- 
tory in many lands is a rehearsal of the trial of Christ. Pilate 
in his representatives, partly through weakness, partly through 
cruelty, "delivers her over to her enemies to be crucified." 

Pilate's part in the Passion has many a lesson for us all. His 
main fault, the source of his fall in the great trial, was moral 
weakness, a deadly fault in a judge and ruler of men. Weakness 
seems no sin, yet it disposes to sin. It appears to be no more 
blamable in character than delicacy of health to the body, yet 
it may be the source of deliberate and reckless wickedness. Though 
Pilate honestly tried to save Christ in the beginning, yet in the 
end, as the scourging, the crowning with thorns, and mockery 
of the Saviour prove, he showed himself unjust, cruel, crafty and 
cowardly. Like all who prefer wealth and place and power to 
principle; who keep the world, not God, before their eyes, Pilate 
ended by perverting justice, ignoring rights, and surrendering all 
that it was his duty as a judge and governor to uphold. He is 
the type, for all time, of the weak, in all states of life, who are 
ever shirking their responsibilities; who, though not wishing to 
do wrong, yet fear to do right; who, though their hearts are 



50 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



with Christ, yet shout with the mob for Bar abbas. Half the 
crimes of history are due to the lack of firmness in rulers. It will 
not do to plead good will, and the dilemma to which circumstances 
reduce us. No hand-washing or protest of good intentions will 
blot out sin. 

Pilate might, and indeed ought, to have died a martyr. Grace 
was not wanting. Its author stood ready to dispense it had Pilate 
willed to receive it; but Pilate, like so many others, preferred to 
risk his soul's life, rather than endanger that of the body. He 
chose "the life that now is, rather than that which is to come." 
And yet how the world deludes its votaries ! Pilate clung to 
Caesar and this world — yet did both play him false. The remnant 
of life granted him was far from happy. Ostracized by the 
world, banished by Caesar to Gaul, he passed it in exile, poverty, 
and wretchedness; and is said to have taken it away by his own 
act. Thus ended the brief career of the unjust judge who 
handed over Jesus "to the will of the Jews." 

All through life we, too, have a choice to make, between the 
world and God, between our body's peace and our soul's peace, 
between Barabbas and Jesus. We can not be neutral. By the very 
nature of things, we must be partisans. The cleavage is too deep. 
God and Baal are not to be reconciled. 

But remember, that to decide for Christ and His Cross, in this 
life, requires above all things moral strength, spiritual courage. 
Weakness is a vice, well nigh a sin. Life is a combat, and the 
strong only win the day. The feeble are in the way — food for 
death. 

Let us therefore resolve ever to be in deed what we are in 
conviction. We are not alone. Christ is with us. His Cross is our 
strength, our tree of life, by the fruits of which we live and grow 
strong in spirit. 

We all, I am sure, would be His disciples. There is no other 
course left, then, but to take up our cross daily, and "follow Him." 



THE CROSS-BEARING 



5i 



VI. THE CROSS-BEARING 



"Bearing his own cross he went forth." — John xix, 17. 

SYNOPSIS. — Introduction. — The Cross-bearing as pictured in fourth sor- 
rowful mystery of the Rosary and stations, as well as the lessons it 
teaches, theme of our discourse to-day. The task of Simon of Cyrene to 
be ours in life. 

I. Christ's fifth and last trial over, Pilate delivers Him up to the 
will of His enemies. He is mockingly called a King and as such He dies. 
His royalty, in highest sense of term, real and eternal. The procession 
to Calvary. Legal forms no guarantee of truth and justice. The meaning 
of death by crucifixion. Sidelights thrown on it from history. The Cross 
before and after Our Lord touched and carried it. What it was and what 
it is — His shame, our glory. The Way of the Cross. Its incidents and 
their meaning. 

II. Christ alone and unaided till now. Bore unflinchingly the full 
brunt of the .storm; but in bearing His Cross He staggers and falls. 
Would teach us need of sharing Cross with Him. Circumstances under 
which Simon of Cyrene took up the Cross. Did it under constraint; but 
found it light and easy. All have to carry their cross. None exempt. 
Christ, by contact with it, has lightened and sweetened the Cross. Even 
if constrained to bear the yoke, grace and good will make the burden, 
easy. The daughters of Jerusalem. How we all find our counterpart in 
the actors of the Passion. New era opens with raising of standard of 
Cross. If we would have it a sign of promise and redemption, we must 
"take it up daily and follow our Lord.'* 

The phase of Our Lord's Passion to which I propose drawing 
your attention this morning is put before us for meditation in the 
fourth sorrowful mystery of the Rosary. The Stations of the 
Cross that adorn the walls of most churches and chapels ever 
picture it vividly to eye and mind. The scene it recalls is that of 
Our Lord carrying His Cross to Mount Calvary. This path of 
sorrows, this "Way of the Cross," was a sad and painful journey to 
Our Lord; but its every step, its every incident, is suggestive of 
lessons to help us in the way of life. As followers of Christ, we, 
too, have to take up our cross and tread the rough, hard way of 
sorrow. Christ meant more than a mere figure of speech when 
He said : "Amen, I say to you, unless a man take up his cross and 
follow me, he cannot be my disciple." We have all to climb Cal- 
vary on our way to Thabor and Olivet. The thought of Christ, 
"bearing his own Cross," ever has been and ever will be a source of 
strength, encouragement and hope to weary saint and sinner alike. 
Many, alas, play the part of Judas, or Pilate, or Herod, in life. Be 



52 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



it ours, on the contrary, to tread in the steps of the humble Cyren- 
ean, who, though constrained, yet helped the Lord Jesus to carry 
His Cross. 

I. The fifth and concluding trial of Christ is over. Pilate's last 
act in the drama of the Cross is to hand Him to those who hun- 
gered for His blood — pithily expressed in the words of the Gospel, 
"Jesus he delivered up to their will" (Luke xxiii, 25). Having thus, 
as it were, thrown the lamb to the wolves, the unjust judge vacates 
his seat. Divine justice alone reigns now, for human justice has 
failed. Christ was ever a stranger to the houses of kings and gov- 
ernors. The one occasion on which He entered He now leaves 
bearing the marks of cruel bufferings, the welts of the scourge, 
a crown of thorns, and a white and purple rag of scorn and mock- 
ery. Yet He is the fountain of royalty and a King, in every true 
sense of the word, even though "His kingdom is not of this 
world." 

The mock trappings of royalty the world gave Him, fit emblem 
of the world's gifts to the worshipers at its shrine, are torn off, and 
His own simple and seamless garment, woven by her who shared 
His griefs, is put on, and He is led forth to bear His Cross. The 
cross that faced Our Lord then was not that we see to-day raised 
above our heads as a symbol of victory and hope. It was no work 
of art, towering over temples and palaces, glittering in the crowns 
of kings, or shining starlike on the neck and breasts of beauty. 
No, it was a vile, accursed instrument of torture, associated with 
shame, crime and degradation. It was not a cross embowered in 
roses; but two coarse, rough beams, hastily jointed, knotty, hard, 
heavy and ugly. No free Roman could suffer by it whatsoever his 
crimes. Death on it was reserved for slaves and the dregs of a 
foreign populace. "Cursed truly," as the Scriptures put it, "was 
he that hung upon the tree." "Go, lietor; bind his hands, veil 
his face, and hang him on the tree of shame," was the legal formula 
of crucifixion amongst the Romans. The procession duly 
formed, starts on its weary round. A trumpeter goes first, to ar- 
rest attention, and keep streets clear. Members of the Sanhedrim 
were present to see the sentence for blasphemy duly carried out. 
A centurion, representing Pilate, and a band of soldiers also fol- 
lowed. In the popular excitement against Jesus, and in favor 
of the thieves, regarded as semi-political offenders, such a measure 
was deemed necessary to quell riot, should any such arise. This 



THE CROSS-BEARING 



53 



deed of wrong was carried out in due form by process of law. 
It is a revolting fact that all martyrdoms have been inflicted by a 
parody of justice, for some legal offense. From the martyr on 
Calvary to the saintly heroines of Compiegne, all have found a 
Pilate and a Sanhedrim to declare them worthy of death. 

On the shoulders of "the Man of Sorrows," already livid with 
"wounds, bruises and swelling sores," the Cross is laid. A side- 
light is thrown on the cross-bearing by a Roman writer, speaking 
of the crucifixion of a slave, who thus writes : "He was dragged 
all over the main thoroughfares of the city. He was made to 
carry his own cross. His hands were bound to its arms, and the 
full weight of the rough cross was laid on his back and shoulders, 
raw and bleeding from the scourging he had received" (Dion 
Halicarnassus : Antiq. xii). Death by crucifixion was so terrible that 
we read of criminals longing for the approach of wolves and other 
wild animals to tear out their living entrails, and so hasten the 
death they craved for. See what it was for Our Lord to drink 
the bitter cup of the chalice of our sins, and die a cruel death on 
the tree of shame. Could such a symbol, we may ask, be glorified ? 
Yes, for "God has chosen the weak things of this world to con- 
found the strong." That emblem of infamy is now the mark of 
the elect of God. It is the ladder of heaven. By it the very outcasts 
of social life scale the skies. The giants of pagan myth are told 
of as piling mountain on mountain, to besiege and capture heaven; 
but thieves have done so on the tree of shame. It is Jacob's ladder. 
On it man ascends to heaven, and angels descend to earth. Amidst 
scoffs and jeers Christ went forth bearing it, as Noe of old car- 
ried the beams that built the ark to save humanity, drowned in the 
sea of God's wrath. It is the wood that Abraham piled on his 
son Isaac's shoulders to light the fire for the sacrifice of that son, 
which God demanded. A substitute was found for Isaac, but none 
for Christ, the sacred sheep, caught by His head in a thorny crown. 

It is His throne. Regnavit a ligno Deus: Christ reigned from the 
wood. "The government is on his shoulders," sang Isaias of old. 
"Christ's Cross is the key of heaven, that openeth the door, which 
no man shutteth." "I will lay the key of the house of David on 
his shoulders" (Isai. xxiii). 

For weal or woe in love or scorn, the eyes of the world are riveted 
on the Cross. It is as much a sign of God's love and anger as the 
rainbow in the sky. "If I be lifted up," says Christ, speaking of the 



54 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



Cross, "I shall draw all things to myself." The eyes and hearts o 
God's holiest, purest, and, let me add, bravest, servants are ever 
directed to this sign of redemption. Even politically, it points to 
victory. All other symbols of dominion go down before it — the 
crescent, the dragon, the rising sun. Whatever is of good repute, 
whatever has promise, either of this life, or the life to come, pro- 
ceeds directly or indirectly, from the Cross. "He that sat on the 
throne," i. e., rested on the Cross, "hath said, Behold, I make all 
things new." Now what greater wonder than in the change 
wrought in the Cross He took upon His shoulders, and the idea of 
sacrifice, and self-abandonment, it implies. 

But, what meant the Cross to Him, when He bore it, on 
the first Good Friday to Calvary? Its weight crushed Him, it~ 
hideous associations appalled Him. In the fierce glare of a ho 
Syrian sun, along the rough winding cobble paved streets of a city, 
all either steeply ascending or descending, He has to bear the rough 
hewn beams that composed it on His bleeding back and shoulders 
In the narrow lanes, the mob push and trample one another to ge 
near, and hiss into His ears their vile imprecations. 

He is thus the scapegoat for our sins, going forth without the 
camp "bearing our reproach" — the innocent Abel going to the field 
to be slain by his brother Cain — Noe bearing the wood of the ark 
to save both clean and unclean — the meek and gentle Moses carry- 
ing the wood of the tree, to be cast into the bitter waters of life, i 
order to sweeten them. 

Tradition has preserved many touching incidents of the way o 
sorrows — His meeting with His holy mother, whose heart was clef 
with the sword of grief — unmoved and tearless, though deep as th 
sea, was her sorrow, whilst the daughters of Jerusalem wept and 
lamented aloud; the heroic charity of Veronica, wiping His face 
with a napkin, and His leaving His sacred image impressed thereon, 
as a mark of loving acknowledgment. Loving pens have woven all 
these touching circumstances into the fourteen stations that make 
up the touching and beautiful devotion of the Way of the Cross. 
I choose one, in which a humble peasant took the leading part. 
Up to the bearing of the Cross He "trod the winepress alone." He 
had gone through, in mind and body, more than enough to cause 
death. No moan or complaint or cry for help or soothing of pain 
escaped His lips. "They that were near me stood afar off." "I 
looked around, and there was no helper," He mournfully complains, 



THE CROSS-BEARING 



55 



through the prophets. He stood alone, yet in the cross-bearing He 
staggered and fell; and needed the help of His creatures. The 
incidents of the Passion are not mere accidents. Each has its les- 
son. He would teach us the duty and necessity of sharing the 
burden of the cross with Christ in life's journey. All are called. 
None are exempt. On the way to Calvary it was Simon from 
Cyrene, in distant Africa, a member of the despised race of Ham, 
on whom this supreme honor was conferred. 

True, he shrank from it naturally, and was compelled to carry 
it after Christ; but once he bent his back to the burden, he found 
it, as we all do, easy and light. The Roman authorities were free 
to press men and their cattle, during an emergency, into the service 
of the state. Hence their compelling Simon, not out of pity for the 
bearer of the Cross, but because they wished Him to survive, to 
die on it. Simon, probably, was carrying the wood for preparing 
the sacrifice of the Paschal lamb — strange coincidence, that the new 
high priest, carrying the wood, on which He should be immolated 
in the new sacrifice, met Simon, carrying wood for the typical sacri- 
fice. He is forced to cast down his load — his own self-imposed bur- 
den, and take on his shoulders the Cross of Christ. There was a 
sacred magnetism in the touch of Jesus ; and the loathed Cross was 
raised and carried easily by the strength of the virtue that went forth 
from Him, and healed all, even the "accursed tree" of the Cross. 

What a strange procession wound its way to Calvary. The Roman 
representatives, the Jews, children of Shem and Asia, Simon the 
Black, a son of Ham, from the burning sands of Africa, all part of 
the living stream, trending forward to the sacred mound. Each race 
furnishes a convert to the new religion of the Cross. It is not the 
lofty, or learned, or proud, that are chosen, but the poor and the 
lowly. Neither Annas nor Caiphas, nor scribe nor Pharisee, was 
chosen from amongst the Jews ; but the penitent thief. He was the 
only Jew found worthy that day to enter into the Kingdom. Grace 
was offered to Herod, and Pilate; but it was the brave centurion, 
presiding at the crucifixion, who alone of the sons of Japhet "re- 
turned that day to his house justified." And so, a lowly African 
peasant was chosen to replace Christ in carrying His Cross. Our 
Lord bore up under scourge and thorn; but fell under the Cross, 
that we sinners might show our good will in coming to His aid. 
This is the import of St. Paul's words, "I fill up those things that 
are wanting to the sufferings of Christ in my flesh" (Coll. i). 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



The Cross of Christ is the magic word that sweetens the bitter 
waters of life. It is hard and repulsive to sight and touch; but as 
with Simon, who shrank from it, at first, it becomes "sweet when 
chosen, and light when lifted on the shoulders." Simon at first was 
under constraint. He was compelled to lay down his bundle of 
wood, and take up the Cross of Christ. So are we all constrained 
by the law of God to lay aside every weight, every sin, every worldly 
care that hinders us from bearing in the proper spirit the Cross of 
Christ. Simon shrank from contact with the Cross, just as the 
natural man, the worldly man, the sensual man, shrinks from pain, 
and penance, and aught else that shadows the Cross. For our soul's 
health, God our Master lays it on us all. He compels us as the 
rulers did Simon, to bear the "reproach of Christ." Bear the Cross 
we must, willingly or unwillingly, after Christ, or away from Him. 
According to the spirit in which it is borne, it will lead, either to 
darkness or light. It hardens or softens. It is a ladder by which 
we may climb, or from which we may fall. It will stay us up, or 
crush us under its weight. 

Simon bears the Cross. The procession winds its way through the 
gate of judgment — leading to the place of execution. "For, as the 
bodies of the beasts, slain by high priests for sin offerings, were 
burnt outside the camp," "wherefore," says St. Paul, "Jesus also, 
that he might sanctify the people by his own blood, suffered with- 
out the gate" (Heb. xiii). They skirt the city walls on their way 
to the rising hillock of Golgotha. Relieved of His Cross though 
still faint and weary, He utters a few words of warning pity to the 
sympathetic souls behind Him. "Daughters of Jerusalem," He said 
to the wailing and tenderhearted women close by, "weep not for 
me, but for yourselves, and for your children." Not that He re- 
jects or fails to appreciate their sympathy — a very natural display 
of feeling, in the sufferings He was undergoing— but He would have 
them understand that there are deeper woes and evils than those 
springing from physical torture. The sufferings of the body pass, 
melt away, into rest or oblivion ; but there are other evils that never 
pass away. The wounds of sin never heal. The shadow of wrong- 
doing ever darkens the restless conscience. The thorns in His head, 
from which the blood was streaming, should blossom in glory — the 
scars on His sacred person should heal and shine as the sun — His 
Cross should be the symbol of victory, and power; but incurable 
evils were lurking in Jerusalem; sin, too, maybe, was in their own 



THE CROSS-BEARING 



57 



hearts. These were the evils they should grieve for. Let them 
weep for these evils, and not merely give vent to useless sorrow 
for a suffering fellow creature. Thus would they reap in joy, for- 
giveness of sin, and promise of life — the fruits of His Cross. 

Calvary is soon reached. The way of sorrows ends in a cruel 
death; but is followed by a triumphant Resurrection. "Death is 
swallowed up in victory." Men "shall now look on Him whom they 
have pierced." The whole world is called to gaze on Christ and 
His Cross. Whether as a sign to be revered or contradicted, it is a 
sign that can not be ignored. Whether we explain the fact on 
natural or supernatural grounds, the Cross of Christ ever has drawn 
to itself the gaze of mankind. True, it is erected for the fall and 
resurrection of many. Types of all classes of men assisted at the 
closing scenes of the most holy life that ended on the Cross; but 
with very varying dispositions and results. In some one or other 
of the actors of the Passion each one may find his counterpart. 
One, alas ! perhaps, like Judas, betrays his Master — sells his God — 
sinks deeper and deeper into crime, despairs, dies and "goes to his 
place." Another, like Peter, denies Him, but repents and is re- 
stored to grace by sincere sorrow; some like Annas, seek to cover 
up their own wicked lives by affected horror of the political aims 
and actions of Christ, and the society He founded. Others, like 
Caiphas, would stop their ears at the blasphemy of His calling Him- 
self Son of God, and Judge of the world to come. Herod and 
Pilate trifle with grace, and the warning voice of conscience. Oth- 
ers, like our lady and the saintly women, hear and see and "keep 
the Word of God in their hearts." 

All, saint and sinner alike, are constrained, as Simon of Cyrene, 
to carry the Cross. He submitted, though opposed to it at first, and 
was saved ; others refuse, sink under it, and are lost. All are lov- 
ingly invited to take it up, and follow Christ willingly and cheer- 
fully. All have to bear life's burden — itself a cross, why not then 
gladly and resignedly? 

Judgment is but a searching inquiry as to how we have carried 
our cross. And that day of reckoning will come to all. The Cross 
has been dipped and sweetened in the fountains of the precious 
blood. Hence we are inexcusable if we carry it not aright. The 
death of Christ on the Cross is the opening of a new era. The 
synagogue is rejected and replaced by the Church. The seventy 
weeks of years of Daniel are closing in, and Christ should be slain, 



5S 



PHASES OF THE SACRED PASSION 



and the people that denied Him should no longer be His (Daniel 
ix, 26). The old Jerusalem, the city of God, the city of perfect 
peace, the joy of all the earth, was doomed and replaced by the new. 

The destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion of the Jewish 
people are but figures of the wrath of God, awaiting unrepentant 
sinners who reject and despise the Cross of Christ. "O crux ave 
spes unica" One sole hope rests to us all in this Cross. Christ 
carried it in shame and sorrow, to Calvary, for our Redemption. 
But, one day He will reappear as Judge with His Cross borne be- 
fore Him, in might, and power, and majesty. If we would have 
Him propitious and His Cross a sign, not of condemnation, but 
redemption, let us listen to His words now, and imprint them on 
our hearts : "Let us deny ourselves and take up our Cross daily and 
follow him." 



r 



LEJe '09 



PHASES OF THE 
SACRED PASSION 

A Lenten Course 

By REV. WILLIAM GRAHAM 




New York: 
Joseph F. Wagner 



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